


Children of the Night - Part I: Where the Lights Are Buring Low

by Nos4a2no9



Series: Children of the Night [2]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-23
Updated: 2006-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 04:13:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nos4a2no9/pseuds/Nos4a2no9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mysterious death forces Batman to reopen an old case, but all is not as it seems. Soon the entire Bat family becomes embroiled in a war brewing between two metahumans, and Batman finds himself distracted by new love. Hard choices have to be made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Dead Girl

The girl died on a cold winter morning, slumped in one of the rear cars on the 5:36 train to Bristol. She had ridden the subway all morning, her life ebbing away as the districts and boroughs of Gotham slipped past her glazed-over eyes. The girl had miscarried, bled to death slowly and quietly on the rush-hour train.

The express to one of Gotham’s best neighborhoods was crowded that afternoon with investment bankers, lawyers and corporate executives. They were bound for the suburbs of Bristol Commons, eager for their gated communities, expensive condos and whatever treasures their TiVos had preserved for them. The 5:36 wound through the heart of Gotham, and most of the passengers boarded in the financial district. They ignored the urban decay around them as they moved north through the city.

The journey through Gotham on that train was made within a tunnel, beginning in the safe, sanitized canyons of steel-and-glass office towers on Andrews Street, sliding up the island through the working-class neighborhoods with their humble townhouses and modest dreams. The tunnel narrowed and fell away as the train entered the East End on an elevated track, and the city commuters found themselves sailing above tenements and tract housing, all inked in the sleazy neon of the sex district.

The shadow of the Sprang Bridge passed over the 5:36 as the train rocketed past a village of homeless transients. Gradually, the view outside the shatter-proof windows began to change, and the train emerged in the bright white countryside of Gotham County. Here, and only here, would the rush-hour Bristol commuters look up from their contracts and newspapers to absorb the cultivated nature only the wealthy could afford. The girl had died just as the train passed out of the tunnel; no one had noticed her slip away.

Detective Renee Montoya supervised the initial investigation, ignoring the passengers as easily as they ignored her. Sometimes street kids would board the Bristol 5:36 in the East End by mistake, head out to the suburbs and get on the next train back. Years ago, when she was a lowly beat cop, Montoya had answered more than a few frantic calls from Bristol commuters who wanted the rag-clad refugees from the East End booted from ‘their’ train. But she'd never had to pull a body from the 5:36 before. The Bristol train wasn’t that kind of commute.

Her partner, Crispus Allen, finished interviewing the passengers sitting closest to the dead girl. “They don’t know when she boarded, or at what stop. Not that I’m surprised,” he muttered under his breath, flicking his eyes dismissively over the passengers buried in their late-edition copies of the Gotham Gazette. Others stared vacantly out the window or listened to music stored on sleek, ultra-expensive MP3 players. “I don’t think they’d realize if the Joker boarded this train unless he offered them an investment portfolio.”

“Cause of death?” Montoya asked, scribbling on a notepad.

“The medical response team is ruling out foul play. They think it might have been a botched abortion.” Both detectives glanced at the far end of the train where the girl had been sitting quietly for the hour-long ride between the East End and Bristol. The grated metal floor of the subway car was liquid with her blood.

“And no one saw anything?” Montoya asked loudly. Allen shook his head. None of the passengers would meet her eyes, although this time it was out of a sense of self-preservation rather than the instinctive avoidance learned early in Gotham, even among the affluent. Montoya wrinkled her nose in disgust. The young girl was probably around same age as some of these people’s daughters. Girls like this, bedraggled, desperate, were part of the landscape in Gotham. Eventually, you stopped seeing them.

“Any ID?” Montoya asked, still challenging the commuters with angry brown eyes. Allen shook his head again.

“Nothing except this.” He crouched next to the girl, seemingly unaware of the smell wafting from the emaciated young body. The girl had definitely made a home on the streets of Gotham; she reeked of the city. Montoya tried to ignore the stink of wet garbage and human waste which clung to the girl’s ragged clothing.

Montoya knelt down gingerly, careful not to disturb the position of the body, and brushed matted black hair away from the girl’s face. She was fifteen, maybe sixteen, unshed baby fat making her smooth, round face fuller and even younger-looking. Her dark skin accentuated the out-of-place nature of the girl’s body: young black women rarely boarded the 5:36. A fresh scar ran up the girl’s wide forehead, trailing from the eyebrow to the hairline. Knife wound, maybe. Allen was pointing at a piece of jewelry which glittered coldly next to the dead skin of the girl’s throat.

“Is it Catholic?“ Allen asked as Montoya fingered the silver-plated cross which dangled from a thin chain around the girl’s neck. The cross was delicate, expensive, inlaid with cut flowers. Tiny gemstones accented the petals of the flowers, glowing amidst the streaks of dirt on the dead girl’s body.

Montoya’s gloved fingers traced the contours of the necklace gingerly, carefully preserving any possible fingerprints left on the silver-plated cross. “Not Catholic, one of the Protestant faiths, maybe,” she told Allen. “I’ve seen something like it before…”

Allen rose, snapping off the rubber gloves he’d been wearing. “Can the ME move the body?”

Montoya nodded, still thinking. The chain slipped out of her fingers as the weight of the cross pulled heavily, falling back to rest against the girl’s skin. “Those gemstones are real, and the cross itself is probably expensive. She should have sold it already for food or drugs. That necklace was important to her.”

Allen frowned, squinting slightly at his partner. “Renee, you’re theorizing. That’s dangerous in our line of work. Facts first, right?”

Montoya rose quickly, glaring at her partner. She was the ranking officer on this case, and Allen knew she didn’t need a lecture on investigative procedure. She tugged off her own pair of gloves, dusting the talcum powder from her hands. “I think your problem is a lack of imagination, Allen,” she said, meeting his eyes evenly. “Let’s head back to Central. I need to check on some things.”

****************

The moon hung low over Police Headquarters, sharing the sky with a slash of bright white light. The Batsignal glowed above the city and as always, Montoya shivered slightly in anticipation, feeling nauseous and excited at the same time.

“Thanks for calling me in on this,” the man beside her said quietly, and Renee smiled.

“No problem, Commish,” she grinned. James Gordon shifted his weight, grunting a bit and leaning heavily on the newly-present wooden cane at his side.

“He certainly is taking his time tonight,” Gordon muttered, wishing he was ten years younger and able to afford a few puffs on a good cigar. And he wouldn’t mind if it were a few degrees warmer so his joints wouldn’t ache so much. “Or maybe it just seems like he’s taking longer these days.”

Montoya bit her lip, wanting to talk to her former commissioner privately before they were interrupted. “I guess you’ve heard about what’s been going on at Central. My badge…”

“Is safe,” Gordon informed her. “You’re one of the finest officers on the force, Renee. Your private life won’t change that fact.”

The wind picked up, and Renee bowed her head, letting the cold air blow down her coat collar. She was sweating, nervous as a raw rookie seeing the Signal for the first time. She spoke quickly, hoping to get it out before He arrived.

“They all look at me differently now. Especially Allen. We’ve been partners for two years and he treats me like a stranger.” Montoya shook her head, letting the wind bite into her more deeply. “If I’d been honest from the start-”

“Give them time,” Gordon advised, watching the sky, his eyes focused on the signal. “They accept Maggie Sawyer, don’t they?”

“Maggie never lied to them,” Renee said quietly. “I never wanted anyone to know. I thought it would just be another part of me nobody could see. And now everyone at Central knows I’m gay. My parents…”

Gordon took one hand from the knob of his cane, slipping his arm around Renee’s shoulders. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re a hell of an officer. They don’t like your personal life, tough. They’re not the ones who have to live with a secret. And a secret always eats you away in the end.”

Gordon rubbed her shoulder. Renee been at his side since he was Lieutenant Gordon; he’d personally appointed her to the Major Crimes Unit, hand-groomed her as a detective. Montoya had held firm through the Clench, through No Man’s Land, and had stayed to morn his retirement. He thought of her as a second daughter, and this latest spot of trouble in her life made him ache for her.

Someone coughed politely behind them and Renee slipped from beneath Gordon’s arm, crossing the roof and switching off the Signal. The ambient light on the rooftop of Central vanished, and Gordon probed the darkness until his eyes readjusted.

“You called?”

Gordon’s face broke into a wide grin, and he felt years of sorrow and experience melt away as the Batman materialized from among the shadows. It always thrilled him, every time. Scared him too. Gordon moved forward stiffly, his cane striking the rooftop with a soft tapping noise.

If Batman was surprised to see the retired Commissioner on the rooftop of Gotham Central, he didn’t show it. His masked face was as impassive as ever, and that made Gordon smile slightly. “Good to see you, old friend,” Gordon whispered, getting to the point as quickly as possible. The Batman didn’t like to waste time.

“We have a break in the Bradshaw disappearance,” Gordon announced loudly enough to let Montoya hear what was said between the two men. Batman extended his hand without a word and Gordon dropped the small silver cross into the vigilante’s gloved palm. Batman examined the cross for a few seconds, his slitted eyes revealing nothing. They had met like this for twelve years and in all that time, Gordon couldn’t ever remember seeing the Batman falter or ask a pointless question.

“Jessica Bradshaw was wearing this the night she disappeared,” Batman said.

Gordon nodded. “Renee thought I’d want in on this, even in an unofficial capacity. Jessica’s been missing for six years, three months. This is the first evidence we have that she might still be alive.”

Gordon knew Batman had already memorized each miniscule detail of the case; he wouldn’t be Batman, otherwise. Jessica Bradshaw had failed to return home from school one day. She attended a private academy in Bristol. Her parents lived in one of the largest homes in Gotham County, and Jessica was due to inherit a quarter of a billion dollars on her eighteenth birthday. As the long, desperate days of searching had drawn to an end, Gordon had given up hope of a ransom demand. Jessica Bradshaw had joined the names of nearly 800,000 other children missing in America each year, and the case was never solved. Gordon kept expecting someone to unearth a skeleton of a young girl in the Gotham countryside sooner or later.

“Where?” Batman asked, his low, gravely voice tense with worry.

“A dead girl on the 5:36 to Bristol,” Montoya told him, watching as the huge, cloaked shadow examined the delicate silver cross, hunched over the piece of jewelry like a creature in a monster movie. Batman turned the cross over in his hand, reading the name of the jeweler engraved on the back. Gordon heard a slight mechanic buzzing noise as a magnifying lens popped into place beneath Batman’s cowl.

“It wasn’t Jessica on the train,” Montoya said quickly. Batman’s head rose, and he inclined his head towards Gordon. The former Commissioner nodded and watched as Batman placed the cross inside a small plastic evidence bag. The plastic bag disappeared instantly into the folds of his cape.

“I know it wasn’t her on the train,” Batman told her. “If it had been, I would have heard about it.” He said it matter-of-factly, but Renee blushed, feeling as though she’d been chastised. Gordon shifted, uncomfortable at the mention of Batman’s mysterious sources. Twelve years, and so many secrets.

“Anything else?” Batman asked, preparing to leave.

Montoya took a deep breath, not wanting to challenge the Batman directly but knowing it was her job to do so. “There’s been trouble in the East End…a building was rigged with explosives, and we pulled six bodies out of the old Robbins Arms Hotel.”

Gordon looked at Montoya in surprise, his brow furrowing beneath his glasses. “That was three months ago,” Gordon pointed out. “Why ask now?”

“We need to know if it’s finished. We know it wasn’t you or your people,” Montoya said quickly, “But if you know something…”

Batman’s immobile face was blank. He didn’t respond and after a few minutes of silence, Montoya ducked her head and muttered “Never mind.” She turned and opened the door to the stairwell leading down into the station. Both men watched her go, not speaking or looking at one another until the sound of her footsteps faded.

“Renee is a good officer,” Gordon said, his voice sounding old and frail as it competed with the wind. “She had to ask.”

“I know,” Batman replied, his cape swirling around his broad shoulders, tossed by the wind. “I didn’t have an answer for her.”

Gordon looked at his friend in surprise. “Since when have you not had an answer for every question we’ve ever asked you?”

Batman watched the city below. “I don’t patrol the East End any longer,” he told Gordon. “Whatever happens there…someone else is watching.”

Gordon nodded, pretending to understand, knowing he never really would. “Good luck. I hope you find Jessica,” he said honestly, but his friend was already gone.

****************

Batman landed on the roof of the Gotham Clock Tower, a Wayne building which had survived the quake and now housed his most important weapon in the war on crime. Entering through a secured door on the roof of the clock tower, Batman made his way downstairs to the nerve center of the operation. A glowing bank of computer monitors revealed a small figure sitting in the darkened room. The Oracle already knew he was there.

“Barbara,” he said by way of greeting, “Pull up everything you have on the Bradshaw kidnapping.”

“Hello to you too,” Barbara Gordon smiled, sipping at a warm cup of tea while simultaneously tapping a few keys, bringing up news stories and Gotham County maps on the monitor before her. “How was Dad? Giddy as a schoolboy, basking in the glow of old times?”

Batman didn’t respond and came forward to stand at her back, his eyes skimming the information displayed on the monitors. “Bring up the school photo.”

Barbara complied, tapping a sequence of keys until a school portrait of Jessica Bradshaw came up on the monitor. The girl in the photo smiled shyly, trying to hide a glittering row of braces on her upper and lower teeth. Her blue eyes were hidden behind thick glasses, and her curly brown hair was a frizzy mass of tangles. A smattering of freckles dusted her nose. Jessica Bradshaw looked young, vulnerable, unsure of herself, almost flinching away from the camera in an effort to avoid preserving her adolescent awkwardness for eternity in a yearbook photo. Barbara could see a resemblance between Jessica’s picture and her own portraits from junior high.

“She was thirteen when she disappeared?”

Batman grunted, reaching over Barbara’s shoulder to click the mouse. A detailed history of Jessica’s disappearance scrolled across the computer screen, most of it written by Batman himself. “I was…distracted, at the time. She should have been found sooner.”

Barbara did some quick mental math. Six years ago, when Jessica had disappeared off the face of the earth, Bane had come to Gotham. Batman hadn’t been simply distracted, he’d been engaged in the fight of his life. Barbara thought it was a miracle he remembered the girl’s case at all.

“The necklace,” he murmured, finally locating what he wanted in the mass of information in Jessica’s computer file. “It was a family heirloom, passed from her grandmother to her mother to her. By all accounts, Jessica Bradshaw was close to her family, particularly her grandmother. She would never have given up the cross willingly.”

“Did I miss something?” Barbara asked, frustrated with her mentor’s reluctance to part with information. Dick did the same thing, holding off the final revelation until the last possible moment, drawing out the suspense. Like father, like son. Both of them were hopeless drama queens.

“A young African-American girl was brought into the Gotham County Morgue early this evening. Bring up the information.”

“Just a sec,” Barbara replied, ignoring his rudeness, leaning forward and securing her glasses firmly on the bridge of her nose. “I assume she had Jessica Bradshaw’s necklace on her?”

Batman didn’t respond, scanning the other monitors for criminal activity in the vicinity of the clock tower and mentally plotting a patrol route through the city. Watching him, Barbara was reminded of a machine, coldly analyzing each data stream until it was ready to compute. She shivered, reminding herself to put on a sweater after he left.

She took another sip of tea and finished the hack into the files of the Gotham City Morgue.

“Here we go,” she said, fingers flying over the keyboard. With an electronic blip, Barbara located the right file. “Young girl, Jane Doe, DOA. Miscarriage due to incomplete abortion of fetus. She was well into her second trimester, so a legal abortion wasn’t possible in Gotham. I guess she tried to terminate the pregnancy herself, or had a rank amateur attempt it…there’s something in here about a ‘foreign object’. She bled to death on the subway.” Barbara paused for a moment, clenching her jaw.

Barbara’s eyes lingered on the autopsy photos of the unknown girl’s face, mentally contrasting them with Jessica’s school photos. They were both just children.

Batman's voice was gruff as he spoke. “Any chance of an identification?”

Barbara pulled up a map of the Gotham subway system, highlighting the 5:36 Bristol route in red. “That train stops a hundred times between the financial district and Bristol. She could have boarded anywhere. And she could have been riding the train for hours before someone found her.”

“I need an answer, Barbara.”

Barbara leaned back, wrapping her fingers around her warm tea mug. “I could check the subway cameras, see if she shows up. It’ll take time, but I’ll use the facial recognition software and hopefully something’ll turn up.”

She felt him withdraw, getting ready to leave. Barbara turned her head. “Was it good, seeing him up there again?”

“It was fantastic.”

He didn’t say any more, but the simple answer made her smile. Six months ago, he would have left her sitting here in her dark clock tower, taking the information and heading back out into the night. Lately, Batman had been positively chatty. “I’m sure he felt the same,” Barbara told him, smiling. “He misses the work, I think.”

Batman turned to go. “I’ll be in the car. If you find anything, transmit the information. And Barbara,” he paused at the window, “Thanks.”

Barbara Gordon nodded, happier than she’d been in days, marveling that one kind word from Batman could please her so much. She wasn’t his daughter or his lover; she wasn’t even Batgirl anymore. But, like all of the rest of the urban vigilantes in Gotham, she valued his opinion over any other. “Good luck,” she said softly, echoing her father.

****************

She couldn’t stop the blood.

It passed over her and around her, seeping through layers of her clothing and filling her mouth, choking her, trailing scarlet tears down her cheeks. And the crying of children deafened her as the blood flowed in.

Dr. Leslie Thompkins sat up with a jerk, breathing heavily. A large, gloved hand rested on her shoulder and she looked up in fright. Leslie took a second to register her surroundings and closed her eyes, trying to compose herself, forcing her heartbeat to slow, her ragged breathing to steady. He stood over her, watching as she struggled for composure.

“It was a nightmare,” Batman told her, modulating the tone of his voice, comforting her with the low rumble of his baritone. “Are you all right?”

Leslie nodded, tasting salty tears on her lips. She dragged in a deep breath and asked him for a sip of water. He brought the glass to her lips and Leslie accepted it with shaking hands. “Thank you,” she told him, swallowing slowly. “I’m sorry…they come to me like this, sometimes.”

“How bad?”

Leslie’s eyes flew to his face. “Not good, but then not as awful as others I’ve heard about.”

He lowered his eyes at that, taking in his old friend’s threadbare apartment, the ragged coverlet spread over an ancient brass-knobbed bed. Every penny the Wayne Foundation donated to the Crime Alley Clinic went to Leslie’s patients. Every time Bruce Wayne bought Leslie Thompkins some new furniture, a lucky family in the East End found a new bedroom set in their home soon after.

“Are you hurt?” Leslie asked, struggling to her knees, touching his face with the hands of a surgeon, or perhaps a mother. He shook his head and stepped back politely as she pulled on a pink terrycloth robe over her nightgown.

“I’m looking for information. A young black girl. You may have seen her…she might have come to you for an abortion.”

“Many do,” Leslie said, going into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face and refill her glass with tap water.

“She died yesterday afternoon.”

Leslie watched herself in the darkened bathroom, staring into the dim reflection in the mirror. At this late hour, in the half-light of her bathroom, it was hard to avoid seeing the marks time had left on her face. Wrinkles marred the skin around her eyes and soft lines forged by pain had formed at the corners of her mouth. She would be fifty-five next month, the same age Thomas Wayne would be if… It was hard for her to imagine her old friend with wrinkles and white hair. To Leslie, he would be thirty-five for the rest of his life. “I’m sorry,” she told the mirror. “About the girl, I mean.”

“I know you are,” Batman said quietly. Leslie came out of the bathroom and he held out the morgue shots of the girl on the train that Barbara had printed for him. “Recognize her?”

Leslie adjusted her glasses, looking through the bottom of the bifocal lenses. “She’s local. The Bowery, I think. I’ve seen her in the neighborhood. How did she die?”

“Miscarriage. Botched abortion. I was hoping you could tell me whose work it was.”

Leslie shook her head. “If she had come to me…”

“She was six months gone.”

Leslie sat on the bed, her slight weight barely making a dip in the mattress. “She should have come. I could have done something. She didn’t have to resort to-” Leslie broke off, clenching her fists, her eyes closed tightly against the threat of tears.

He didn’t reply, knowing there was nothing he could say. Leslie took responsibility for every death, every lost soul in Gotham. Over the years, Alfred had become extremely critical of such a detrimental way of thinking. But Batman had never tried to argue with her. He understood how she felt.

“Why are you interested in this poor girl?” Leslie asked, her voice deeper, sadder.

Batman shifted his weight. “She might have information about the Bradshaw kidnapping. She had a piece of jewelry the Oracle ID’d as belonging to Jessica.”

Leslie took another sip of water, remembering the details of the case which had consumed the city’s media six years ago. “You’ve met the Bradshaws?”

“A few times,” he told her, forcing his mind to recall a dull, wasted night that blended in with so many other charity balls and social functions he attended to benefit the Wayne Foundation. “Jessica has her mother’s eyes.”

“The Bradley family traveled in the same circles as your parents,” Leslie said in the dark room. “I hope this dead girl will lead you to another lost child.”

He nodded, turning to go, but paused as Leslie placed a restraining hand on his arm. “I was hoping you’d stop by. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

Batman turned back to face her, a small, courageous woman drowning in a linen nightgown, her eyes glowing with warmth and love for him, for everyone in the city. “Our girl’s in trouble.”

He extracted his arm from her gentle grip, squaring his shoulders. “Selina?”

Leslie nodded, the lenses of her glasses catching light from the neon sign outside her window. “I assume you’ve been checking up on her?”

Batman started to shrug and then caught himself, feeling as though he were eight years old and preparing himself for a lecture. “She can take care of herself.”

Leslie sighed. “She certainly can. She can take care of herself, and her sister, and her friends, and the entire East End. It doesn’t mean she needs to do it alone.” She smiled at him, softly, wisely. “And she is alone. Especially now. Reminds me of you, when you first started out. She has a long, hard road ahead of her, and her passion for self-destruction rivals even your own. Help her, please. Don’t wait for her to ask.”

Batman nodded and Leslie surprised him as she wrapped her arms around him, holding him close. After a few seconds, he hugged her back, memories of childhood stirring. He had always been comforted by Leslie, by her warmth and selfless nature. If she hadn’t stepped in after his parents’ murder, he knew he would have been lost years ago.

“You are my greatest project,” she told him softly. “You won‘t fail at this. You won’t fail her.”

He left as quietly as he had come, a fading shadow of a memory. If she wanted, Dr. Leslie Thompkins could close her eyes and pretend his coming had been a passing dream. She reminded herself again that Batman was the illusion, Bruce Wayne the reality. The man himself was only coming to realize that.

****************


	2. Selina

She stood 5’4 in her stocking feet, 135 lbs soaking wet, with large green eyes and close-cropped black hair. She smelled like exotic spices and could bring a man to his knees with a single glance. He’d seen her do it. She could handle herself in a fight with men three times her size and she liked her coffee black and sweet. He watched her as she played with the radio or shuffled through the old case notes he kept in the glove box, fingers moving deftly over each object with innate precision and grace. She hummed softly, badly off-key. Selina Kyle couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but Slam Bradley wasn’t about to complain.

They were sitting in his rusted old Plymouth just outside the Kane Projects. Slam had been chain-smoking for four hours and when he broke the silence between them his voice was rough. Her voice was breathy, low and quiet, a raspy utterance perfect for a darkened bedroom but at home in a trash-lined alley at midnight.

“It’s quiet,” Selina remarked, stretching long, shapely legs, wiggling some feeling back into her toes. A stylish, expensive-looking brown trenchcoat was wrapped around her curvaceous frame, concealing a black leather jumpsuit. He knew the aviator mask and goggles were folded tightly within her pocket, the lock-picking tools hidden in the fingertips of her gloves. Slam knew what she was planning, what she’d spent the day preparing to do. He swallowed past the hard knot of worry in his throat, trying not to notice the way she smelled or the motion of her breasts as she breathed in and out, trying not to think of the past.

“Want to give it another hour, then call it a night?” she asked him, arching her back in a long stretch.

“Sure,” he replied, knocking the ash off the tip of his cigarette, not feeling the cold after four hours of it. “Of course, if the place goes up, we can always say it exploded because your butt was sore.”

Selina shot him a grin masked in a glare. She took the cigarette from him, took a long pull and then handed the butt back. “Any coffee left?”

“Nope,” Slam told her, passing her a flask. “Just whiskey in the bottle.” Selina winced and rolled her eyes, took a swig and replaced the cap.

“Why do I get the feeling that you’re trying to relive your Prom night? I haven’t had to drink out of a flask since I was in grade school.”

Slam smiled, the small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes adding new creases to his already shopworn features. “Yeah, you’re a tough girl,” he smiled. “Want to play another round?”

“Fine,” Selina sighed with bone-deep reluctance. “Is it an animal?”

“Nope.”

“Mineral?”

Slam shot her a look from beneath the brim of his battered old fedora. “Who the hell picks ‘mineral’ in this game?”

“Iron ore is making a comeback,” Selina grinned. “Vegetable, then. Is it orange?”

“Yep.”

“Slam! It’s not a carrot, is it? That’s the third time you’ve picked carrot.”

Slam Bradley shook his head, grinning. “I told you I was bad at this game.”

There was comfortable silence for a moment until Slam remembered that dangerous things could happen during chummy pauses in conversations. Things like stolen kisses and scratches on his back.

“So,” he said to fill the silence, “when are these guys gonna show?”

“They’ll be here,” she assured him, watching the tenements across the street. “Lou said they’d try it tonight.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” Slam said, tossing the cigarette butt into the gutter next to the car, “they can have the Kane Projects. It’s just a hobo hotel.”

Selina shook her head, despairing of ever educating Slam about the intricacies of Gotham real estate. “If Delmassi chases out the homeless and demolishes this building, what do you think he’ll replace it with? A day-care center? Low-rent housing? He’s building a mob casino, Slam. And that’s the last thing the East End needs.”

“Yeah, we wouldn’t want the gambling crowd in this neighborhood. They’re liable to get mugged.”

“You’re in a good mood tonight,” she pointed out, shifting the litter on the floor of the car around to find a more comfortable position for her feet.

Pushing the brim of the fedora off his forehead, Slam frowned and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I know it’s important, and I think I know why. But something feels a little funny about this whole thing.”

“Don’t be such a killjoy,” Selina advised, taking another sip from the flask. “I’ll bet you haven’t had this much fun in ages.”

Slam had to admit, she was right. Not since he’d broken things off with her had life been this much…not fun, exactly, but bearable.

Selina rubbed the back of her neck, stretching again. “Look, I’m not expecting Gotham’s corporate elite to swoop down and put up decent, affordable, rent-controlled housing if we stop these bastards from torching the tenements. It’s just-” she caught herself, lowering her voice, forcing neutrality into her expression. “We have to stand up to these wiseguys. Someone has to.”

“Okay,” Slam surrendered quietly, looking out the window, trying not to admire her passion and commitment to this hellhole of a city. Instead, he focused on three shadowy figures as they rushed down an alleyway behind the Kane Projects. “We’re on,” he announced, talking to himself. Selina had already vanished and Slam caught sight of Catwoman darting down the alleyway across the street.

Catwoman slipped across the street, her inky black costume melting into the shadows. She found a rusting fire escape and clambered lightly up the ladder, going in the first unlocked window she could find. Delmassi’s boys had already cleared out the transients who had made their homes in the old Kane Projects, handing out eviction notices in the form of severe beatings. She and Slam had only clued in this afternoon to the final stage in the ‘rehabilitation’ of the old apartment complex: they were working slowly, now that Holly was gone.

Catwoman paused, listening for heavy footsteps or high-pitched laughter as Delmassi’s arsonists rigged the building to explode. It took only a few seconds for her to locate them in the old building and she surprised them, leaping out of the shadows, whip coiled at her waist, ready to strike. Her dark goggles and pointed aviator cap cut a strange silhouette in the darkened room, and she pretended not to notice as one of the three hoods gasped “Batgirl!” before shooting at her with an automatic pistol.

Catwoman dove out of the path of the bullets, skidding on her shoulder across the room until she stopped her own momentum by slamming into the knees of the other two arsonists. The men collapsed with a cry, squeezing the triggers of their weapons as they pitched forward. Mad gunfire erupted towards the ceiling, scoring the rooftop and sending bits of plaster raining down into the room. Catwoman grunted as one of the men landed on top of her, knocking the wind from her lungs. She leaped up, using the chaos to disarm the first shooter.

The other man had recovered, standing and taking aim at her with his pistol. “You can’t possibly be that stupid,” Catwoman marveled, flicking her wrist and sending six feet of bullwhip towards him. The whip cracked loudly and the man dropped his gun, codling his hand in pain. She did a handspring to close the distance between the last gunman, kicking his rifle out of reach. Within thirty seconds, both of the gun-happy arsonists were unconscious and unarmed.

“I wasn’t the class Mathalete,” Catwoman said, “but weren’t there three of you?” She went to the window and flashed the ‘all clear’ signal to Slam, who was waiting on the street below. His job was to make it look as if he’d taken down the arsonists as part of a licensed private-eye gig. As far as the authorities in Gotham were concerned (the legal authorities, anyway), Catwoman had died in an explosion sixteen months ago. Selina wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.

Heart pounding, adrenaline pumping, Catwoman chased the last thug up two flights of stairs, pausing at the landing between floors to listen intently. She slowed her heart rate to a crawl, ears perked for the slightest noise. She heard a strangled yelp! and snapped her head to the left, then upwards towards the roof. Frantic, panicked footsteps echoed down through the ceiling. Catwoman charged up the stairs, bursting onto the roof of the Kane Projects.

The sun was just rising in Gotham as she erupted out of the stairwell, and it took an instant for her starlight lenses to compensate for the additional light. Catwoman extended her remaining senses to their limits, scanning the rooftop for her prey. She knew almost immediately that any further action on her part was unnecessary. He was here.

“Nice of you to drop in,” she said, pulling her goggles up and off her face, blinking in the rosy light of early dawn. Batman was crouched at the north end of the roof, the last arsonist unconscious and trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey at his feet. “You didn’t have to gift-wrap,” Selina smiled, glad to see him and letting him know it.

Batman rose from his crouch, not sparing the bound and gagged thug a second glance. Selina came forward into his space, not quite touching him but close enough to feel the heat from his body. “Thanks for the assist, even if it came a little late in the game.”

He didn’t smile. He never did.

“Rough night?” she tried again, thinking he was being rather uncommunicative, even for him. If she had to venture a guess, she would say he looked tired, worn-out. It had taken her more than ten years to be able to guess when he was near the point of exhaustion.

“No, only unproductive,” was his response. Downstairs, they heard Slam burst into the building and shout ‘Freeze’! at the stirring arsonists as the dim blare of police sirens echoed through the streets.

“Want to go somewhere?” she asked him. “Talk, without the urban soundtrack?”

Batman considered her for a moment, Leslie’s warning prominent in his mind. Selina was tired; he noted the dark circles under her eyes, and how pale she looked now that the faint blush of adrenaline was receding. “Let’s talk,” he said, turning without a word and leaping from the roof.

“I get the feeling it’s going to be a one-sided conversation,” Selina muttered, replacing her goggles over her eyes and swan-diving after him.

******************

They ended up on the top of the Robert Kane Memorial Bridge, Gotham spread out before them under the rising winter sun. He liked this view of the city. Gotham looked orderly, structured, at peace. At night the blood-red craze of sex, violence and crime threatened to overwhelm the city’s horizon, but at early dawn, the view was worthy of a postcard. The early-morning sun bounced off the rebuilt skyline of the city and the modern glass buildings of the downtown core sparkled like bright, false jewels. Wayne Towers soared above the skyline, a testament to his daylight achievements in Gotham. In those few moments, when the sun was rising and the city was bathed in golden light, he could see the Gotham which existed only in his mind’s eye, the Gotham he had been fighting for his entire life.

Selina dropped into a sitting positing and watched the sun rise slowly, the bright glare on her goggles concealing her eyes. “Why were you in the East End?”

Batman watched the river running 6,000 feet below them. A garbage scow was just pulling out into the main river channel. Gulls were already covering the barge; their screeching cries floated up towards the two masked vigilantes on the cold air, faint and dim. “Leslie said you needed help.”

“What, those firebugs back at the Kane projects? I handled them,” Selina told him, feeling her nose begin to run in the freezing air. “If you thought so little of my abilities, why did you give me the East End?”

Batman opened and closed his fist, stretching his fingers, noting how sore his fingers were. The Kevlar-lined gloves protected his hands from fractures and knife wounds, but the extra padding put so much pressure on his digits that his fingers were often totally numb by the end of the night. The chill winter air didn’t help either. “I gave you the East End because I trust you to protect it, to make a difference. And you’ve done your best, Selina,” he told her, watching her in the sunlight. She was relaxed, her feline nature asserting itself, making her comfortable and at ease no matter the situation. The fight in the projects had been nothing more to her than a warm-up exercise.

“I hope you’re not trying to fire me,” she warned, standing, ready to unsheathe her claws.

“No,” he told her. “You can do things in the East End that I can’t. It isn’t my neighborhood. It never was.”

“Good,” she said, standing. A light, breezy tone had filtered back into her voice. She closed the distance between them, telegraphing her next move as she pulled her goggles off her face. He stiffened his posture and watched impassively as she took his hand, tugging off the glove and slowly massaging his fingers until some feeling returned to the tips. He was patient throughout her administrations, trying to ignore the sparks of heat generated by her touch. Throughout the years, she had alternately annoyed, angered and aroused him. Selina was one of the few people who was able to touch him.

She watched his face, fascinated by the slight twitch in his lips which signaled either amusement or irritation. Selina kept rubbing his knuckles, noting the tiny white scars which marred the back of his large, masculine hands. His fingers were long and agile-looking, the hands of a surgeon, maybe, had he chosen that life. The knuckles of his fingers were blue and separated, marking him for eternity as a karate master. His palms were cold.

“You need to redesign those things,” she gestured at his glove. “Give yourself some breathing room.”

“No good,” he told her. “The gloves have to lie as close to the skin as possible to maximize sensitivity to touch. I couldn’t pick a simple lock if they were any looser.”

Selina smiled, turning his palm over and drawing his fingers across her own gloved-encased hand. “I can still feel things through mine.”

Something in his face or posture shifted slightly; Selina couldn’t guess what, but the moment was over. She dropped his hand, letting him replace his glove. “It isn’t like you to let me stall for so long.”

His lips twitched upward, the closest thing he did to smiling.

“I’m not here to fight with you, or lecture you. I’m worried. So is Leslie. These last few months have been hell. You’ve lost friends, loved ones. You’ve been betrayed. And while I can’t fault your performance on the street-” Batman halted his speech, marveling at her effect on him. He rarely spoke this much to Robin or Batgirl when he was wearing the cowl. “I don’t want you to feel as though you bear the weight of the entire East End.”

Something angry and liquid flashed in her eyes, and Selina stepped back, pulling her goggles down, shutting him out. “It doesn’t matter how I feel. It’s been twelve years and you haven’t been able to do anything in Crime Alley despite all of your little gadgets and resources. I bear the weight because I know I’m the only one who can help the people down there.”

Batman didn’t reply at first, thinking that she was at least partly right. He sighed heavily. The four-hour meeting with the financial board of Wayne Enterprises he had to attend this morning wouldn’t be half as difficult. He tried a different tactic. “I came to you to talk about a case.”

Selina nodded, suddenly all business. “I’ll help if I can.”

“I’m not sure how closely you follow local news-”

“I’m more of an international events sort of girl,” Selina replied, urging him to get to the point.

Batman’s slitted eyes narrowed. “Jessica Bradshaw, heir to the Bradshaw real estate fortune, disappeared six years ago. The police found nothing to suggest she was abducted, but I expected a ransom demand. Time passed, the case was put aside despite her father’s political pull, and Jessica was presumed dead. Yesterday, a girl died on the Bristol train. She was wearing a necklace that belonged to Jessica Bradshaw.”

Catwoman nodded, readjusting her goggles. “And why would any of that interest me?”

“Because the girl who died on that train, our connection to Jessica, was from the Bowery. Leslie says she lived in your old neighborhood.”

“How did she die?” Selina asked. He didn’t meet her eyes, looking at Gotham shining in the distance.

“Back-alley abortion. She was too far along to get a legal one.”

Selina bowed her head for a moment, lips pursed in anger. “I find it ironic that you’re more interested in Ms. Bradshaw than the East End runaway who bled to death because of an ass-backward policy the clinics in the East End follow. A policy implemented, might I add, by people who have never lived in this part of Gotham. People like Jessica Bradshaw’s father and his real estate millions.”

Batman grabbed her upper arm, iron fingers biting into her flesh. “I’m trying to save a life, Selina. Make all the political statements you’d like, but help me.”

“And to think it used to get me hot when you played the tough guy,” she whispered, danger threading through her soft voice. He released her quickly and Selina resisted the urge to rub her arm.

“I thought we were friends,” she said quietly.

“We are.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.” He still didn’t look at her. “Touched a nerve, I guess,” Catwoman muttered. “Do you have a picture of the girl? I’ll see what I can find out.”

He handed her the morgue photo which he’d been circulating all night in the East End. Selina’s eyes flicked over the picture and she pressed a small button on the side of her starlight goggles, flipping a different lens into place. “I think Holly might have known her. Unfortunately,” she sighed, “Holly is unavailable at the moment.”

“Where is she?” he growled.

“Bludhaven.”

****************


	3. The Dead Girl

Dick Grayson was having a terrible day. Patrol hadn’t gone well. Two domestic assaults and a drunken brawl had left a bad taste in his mouth. Life as a police officer was rewarding, usually, but lacked the sense of unfettered accomplishment he knew as a vigilante. As Robin and later Nightwing, he’d been able to swoop in, save the day, and consider it a job well done.

Things were different now that he wore a badge. It was less about saving people than filing paperwork and playing the political game. Dick felt as though he spent most of his time protecting his place on the force amid corruption and apathy. He understood now why Bruce had chosen to fight crime as Batman rather than as a crusading district attorney or Commissioner of Police. Less red tape. Still, in a small way, Dick felt it was the only time in Bruce’s life that he’d chosen the easier path.

Dick was waiting outside a strip club to brace an informant, leaning casually against his patrol car, trying to give the right impression when the informant finally showed. He wanted to appear casual and still convey the full weight of the law; slouching against the cruiser seemed to be the right thing to do. The door of the club opened, belching a thick cloud of smoke and the stench of cigars. It wasn’t his guy.

He watched the old derelict stumble out into the evening air, shielding his eyes against the dying light of the sun. Dick yawned, hoping that after his shift he could sneak home and sleep for a few hours before donning his Nightwing apparel. Sal, the informant, was now very late and Dick felt his patience beginning to ebb.

“Psst,” a voice beckoned from a nearby alley.

“Dammit, Sal,” Dick cursed. “This isn’t a top secret meet. Cut out the Deep Throat stuff and get over here.”

“I don’t know you, son,” a deep, resonant voice replied, “but the name’s not Sal. Folks around here call me the Prophet, and I have some information you’ll be needing.”

Dick inclined his head towards the sound of the voice, but failed to locate even the dim outline of a body in the darkness of the alley. “You said you didn’t know who I was,” Dick replied. “Why would I be interested in your information?”

“Because you follow the path of the righteous,” the voice replied, as if explaining something to a very small child. “The Oracle pointed you out to me.”

Dick frowned, wondering if this was some silly game Barbara had cooked up. He wasn’t really in the mood. “Why don’t you come out of those shadows and we’ll talk,” Dick suggested.

“We are all in the shadows, son,” the voice replied. “But if it’ll make you feel any better…”

Dick tensed, ready to defend himself if the stranger in the alley was dangerous or violent. His hands never strayed to the gun holstered at his side. Dick knew he would never fire his weapon, no matter what the circumstances. He watched, surprised, as a small bundle of rags and filth emerged from the alley. The Prophet was a small black man of indiscriminate age who was perched, legless, on a wheeled board. Bits of cloth were wrapped around his knuckles and the Prophet pushed himself forward with his hands until he stopped at Dick’s feet.

“You have some information for me?” Dick asked the little man.

“Some advice, my son,” the Prophet corrected, warm brown eyes shining beneath a cloud of wrinkles and a scraggly gray beard. “Go into the mouth of the devil, and you will be purified in battle with him.”

“Have you been drinking, sir?” Dick asked, pulling out his logbook. “Can you give me your address?”

The Prophet smiled and shook his head slowly, matted locks of hair falling over his forehead. “You lack faith, my son. But be patient. Trust in the Prophet. More will come to you. An angel, and a child whose blood is black and tainted.”

Dick nodded, folding his logbook and replacing it in one of the Velcro-sealed pockets on his jacket. He'd decided Sal was never going to show. “Prophet,” he talked slowly, calmly. “Come with me. I’ll get you fixed up at the Cypress Mission for the night, okay? You can clean up, get some hot food…”

The little man pushed himself closer, the wheels of his board grating against the pavement with a sharp, hollow sound. “Trust the child,” he whispered. “She will lead you to salvation.”

The door to the strip club banged open again, and a cheaply-dressed, potbellied man with a broken nose and forcep marks on his forehead stumbled out, more than half drunk. “Dickey!” he cried, launching himself forward and then catching himself before he could perform a faceplant. Dick cursed softly, wondering why the one reliable informant he’d located in Bludhaven was a hopeless drunk. He turned back to speak with the Prophet but the little man had already vanished into the darkness of the alley. Dick shrugged, turning back to Sal. It was going to be a very long day.

************

Later that evening as Nightwing patrolled the streets of Bludhaven, Dick found himself mulling over the bizarre encounter with the Prophet. He’d spent too much of his youth locked in combat with supernatural forces, aliens and immortal megalomaniacs to doubt the existence of the paranormal. The strange little transient had sent up a red flag of warning and he resolved to ask Barbara if she could find anything in the Oracle’s database about the mysterious little man.

Nightwing moved easily over the rooftops of Bludhaven. The burg was half the size of Gotham and Dick knew the small city intimately. Taking a leaf from Bruce’s book, he’d memorized the blueprints of the entire downtown core. He knew every sewer access point, the layout of every tenement and seedy motel. The small evening crowds of commuters and tourists had thinned from the downtown streets. By ten o’clock Bludhaven was a ghost town, decent people having surrendered the city to the other half of the night: the human predators and their prey.

The killing fields in Gotham were found among the East End crack houses and ghettos. In Bludhaven, man hunted man in Desolation Row, Bludhaven’s version of the Bowery but a step closer to hell. The buildings were packed tightly together, creating a dark warren of alleyways and narrow streets. Prostitutes lined the sidewalks of the Row, junkies filled the gutters, and the entire section of the city stank of deep-running pain and stale desperation. The working girls on 2nd Avenue were offering their wares and Nightwing paused on a rooftop to monitor as the women bargained with potential customers from the trash-lined sidewalks, screaming obscenities when rejected or laughing shrilly in clustered groups as cars crawled by.

The johns spoke to the girls from rusted heaps which spat exhaust into the cold night air. The high-rollers, clients who drove luxury cars and wore tailored suits, went to the massage parlors and specialty clubs in Gotham. The girls who ended up in Bludhaven were low-rent, too old or too stoned to work the Gotham scene.

It was freezing and so the crowd lining the sidewalks was a little smaller than usual. Dick found a quiet, dark cornice and crouched in the shadows, watching the transactions playing out below. He caught sight of a young girl moving among the junkies on Vincent Street. She stopped every few feet, bending down to speak to a spaced-out heroine addict or a resting call-girl, sometimes joking with them, sometimes taking a borrowed drag on their cigarette, always comfortable. Instincts honed in early adolescence kicked in, and Dick began to shadow her.

She came to a stop outside the burned-out shell of what had once been a needle-exchange clinic. In this neighborhood business had been booming, but the clinic had been forced to close due to protests staged by the small, vocal religious community in Bludhaven. Funding had dried up and now the building did other business: prostitutes often completed sales there. So did the heroine and smack dealers.

The girl lingered outside the bombed-out shell of the building, looking for an address. She definitely wasn’t local, although she knew the scene. She checked the faded address scrawled in white spray-paint on the side of the building once more, shrugged her narrow shoulders, and moved on. Dick fought back a yawn, ready to call it quits. He’d planned to make the drive up to Gotham that night, check in on Barbara and ask for information regarding the Prophet. He made it halfway down the block before a scream split the night and Dick charged back down the street, scanning for trouble.

Vincent Street was deserted. The working girls and dealers had cleared out when the scream had sounded. Dick knew the Bludhaven PD wouldn’t respond immediately even if someone had called it in. Heart racing, he checked side streets and alleys, hoping the girl would scream again so he would know where to look. A second later, he caught the faint sounds of a scuffle down a tiny pathway cut between two buildings. Dick raced towards the noise and as the passage broadened, he slipped two short wooden staffs out of pouches sewn into the material of his leggings. Dick’s fingers curled around the short Escrima sticks with the ease of long familiarity, his muscles tense and ready for action. He rounded the final bend in the passageway, breathing properly, energy flooding into his being, lending him strength and power.

Two men were advancing on the young girl he’d seen earlier. They were thugs, muscle-men for hire, lacking a true fighter’s centeredness and precision of movement. Dick calculated the distance he had to close before he could attack, not wanting to jeopardize the girl’s safety. Moving soundlessly, he came within a yard of the taller man before some movement in the girl’s eyes alerted him to Nightwing’s appearance. The thug swiveled, his deep-set eyes narrowing as he let out a roar of anger. Dick leaped out of the way, hearing rather than witnessing the larger man’s pratfall into a stack of garbage cans. He turned his attention to the other man, who had shown some initiative by grabbing the girl in a vise-like grip.

“One step closer,” the heavy warned, “and I’ll snap her neck.”

Dick threw up his hands, keeping hold of the Escrima sticks. “Hey, I was just out for a stroll, minding my own business. Your friend is the one who wanted to get rough.”

The heavily-muscled thug, an easy three hundred pounds and none of it brain, frowned. “I thought all you costume freaks got off on helping little girls like this,” he said, tightening his grip around the girl’s throat until she winced and cried out in pain. Dick kept his eyes on the man’s wide, fat face.

“I just don’t like to see people getting roughed up in Bludhaven. It’s bad for the tourist industry,” he said lightly, deciding this had gone on long enough. Dick tossed his Escrima sticks behind his head, distracting the man as he jumped, caught hold of a rusted fire escape ladder and somersaulted in the air. He’d misjudged the heavy’s coordination and speed slightly; the man reached up with surprisingly-quick reflexes and snagged Dick’s foot, still holding tightly to the girl. Dick kicked himself loose just as the girl surprised them both by driving her elbow into the man’s solar plexus. As he grunted and doubled over, she brought her knee up and the sound of cracking bone echoed along the walls of the small alley.

The man cried out in pain and threw the girl aside before Dick landed in front of him, kicking him hard in the jaw, driving the blow with the force of his own falling body. The man went down hard, his chin smacking the sidewalk with a dull crack. If Dick’s kick hadn’t shattered his jaw, the fall to the pavement had finished the job.

“He’ll be pretty sore in the morning,” Dick predicted, turning his attention towards the girl. She’d stumbled into the corner of the building when the thug had pushed her aside. Now she sat on the ground with a slightly dazed expression. “You okay?” Dick asked, resting a gloved hand on the girl’s shoulder. She flinched and retreated, hunching her back and curling her knees up against her chest. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he promised, moving slowly and carefully, giving her space.

She raised her eyes to his, and he could feel the fear coming off of her in waves. She hadn’t made a sound throughout the encounter with the two thugs, but when faced with his Nightwing visage, she froze and seemed even more terrified now that the ordeal was over. Dick had only ever experienced this kind of reaction when he’d worn the Bat costume. His Nightwing costume was designed for utility, not to strike fear into the hearts of the cowardly, the superstitious or the terrified victims of random street crime.

The girl swallowed, her wide, panicked eyes scanning for an escape route. Dick rose from his crouching position, backing up. “You haven’t done anything wrong,” he told her. “I’m not here to arrest you. I just want to make sure you can get home okay.”

The shock of the attack was wearing off. The girl seemed to be registering his softly-spoken words. She raised china-blue eyes to his face, biting her lip in pain. “I think my arm is broken,” she whispered. Dick glanced at the limb hanging lifelessly at her side, guessing she’d probably dislocated it.

“Can I take a look?” he asked and after another mad glance around the dark side street, the girl accepted her options and nodded in assent. Dick stepped closer and she flinched but kept control as he gently probed her shoulder and upper arm. She was delicately built, her features pretty and child-like. Only her eyes indicated that she was close to his own age. Her hair was a mass of wild pink and red streaks cut in a daring, close-cropped style Dick associated with West Coast punk rockers.

She inhaled sharply in pain and Dick released her arm. “It’s not broken,” he confirmed, “but it is dislocated. It needs to be reset. I can take you to the free clinic on Gracey Street…”

She shook her head wildly, terror flooding back into her face. “No. No hospitals, no clinics. Do it here, or not at all.”

Dick shook his head. “It’ll hurt…”

“I can handle it,” she breathed, jaw set in determination. “Believe me, I’ve been through worse.”

“Well, I’m not going to do it here,” Dick told her, using his best imitation of Bruce’s my-way-or-the-highway voice. “I have a safehouse not far from here. I use it when I get hurt and can’t make it home. Okay?”

She watched him for a moment, weighing the pain she was fighting against her distrust of men in masks. “Okay,” she agreed softly.

Dick tried to help her along as they walked the twelve blocks to his safe-house but she shrugged off his assistance, trudging slowly on shaky legs, cradling her arm.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Dick asked conversationally, hoping to distract her from memorizing the route to the small apartment on Morrison Street where he kept medical supplies, a spare costume and emergency food and cash. In the last six years, the entire Bat family had come under attack from disasters both man-made and natural. Bruce now insisted that everyone within the ‘inner circle’ - Tim, Cassandra, Barbara, Dick, even Leslie and Alfred - had to maintain a secret satellite residence stocked for any emergency. Dick smiled to himself. Sometimes Bruce’s paranoia paid off.

The girl responded hesitantly. “I’m from Gotham,” she offered.

“I can spot a Gotham girl anywhere,” Dick boasted, keeping his tone light and bouncy. “You handled yourself pretty well back there. Had any professional training?”

“Just enough to get hurt instead of killed,” she replied, frowning. “Is it much further?”

“Couple blocks,” he said breezily. “You realize that once you’ve seen my secret lair, I’ll have to relocate. You’re going to cause me a lot of trouble: I’ll have to cancel my lease, find a new place that’ll take pets, get some guys to help me move…” He checked the girl’s expression. She’d relaxed, slightly, and seemed less focused on the pain.

“Are all the vigilantes in Bludhaven as…funny as you?”

“Don’t complain,” Nightwing cautioned. “At least I don’t charge for the comedy. Here we are,” he announced, bringing them to a stop outside a nondescript apartment building. “Wait here,” he told her. “Try not to beat up any self-important thugs till I get back, okay?”

She nodded, and he left her to scale the side of the building, unlock the window of the 5th floor and tumble inside. Dick went downstairs and let her into the sleeping building. She followed him up several flights of stairs and entered the small apartment cautiously. It was clear Dick didn’t live here. The small set of rooms were barren, stocked with pieces of utilitarian, nondescript furniture in various shades of white. A medical bed occupied the center of the room, wheeled trays stocked with medication, surgical equipment and rolls of pristine bandages an arm’s length away.

There was a small, inexpensive chemistry set up at the north end of the room, as well as a sparse, functional gym. The apartment was a much smaller version of Dick’s real residence on Parkthorne Avenue, a building which he owned and maintained under an alias. Even this small haven couldn’t be traced to Dick Grayson or his costumed personae. Nightwing rarely used this set of rooms. He had never brought anyone here before, but Dick wasn’t the sort of person to balk at new experiences.

He guided the girl to the medical bed and she sank down gratefully, letting out a long sigh of relief.

“I’ll get you something for the pain in a sec. I have to reset that shoulder,” Dick told her, grabbing a towel and heating some water on a hotplate. She watched his movements through narrowed eyes, still afraid but curious too.

Dick saw her questioning expression and smiled. “First rule of triage,” he explained as he finished in the kitchenette. “Clean and inspect the area, then prepare to operate.”

“Done this often?” she asked, looking around the apartment.

“Too often. I’ll have to cut your sleeve off. I don’t want you to try to wiggle out of that jacket.”

The girl nodded and Dick crouched at her side, slitting the jacket’s sleeve in a straight, easily-repairable line along the seam. Her arm was small and white, the shoulder badly bruised and discolored. Kneeling closer so his head wouldn’t block the light, Dick probed the arm once again, worried he’d missed something. Turning her arm over, he identified with sad experience the track marks in her arm. Small, white scars running the length and width of her skin betrayed a nasty heroine addiction. The lack of blue veins in her snow-white skin, discoloration of the arm around injection points and her old, sad eyes were all tell-tale indicators. The girl was perhaps twenty: Dick guessed she’d been using for at least half of her life.

“You must see this kind of thing a lot,” she said in the suddenly quiet room. Before he could respond, she continued. “Young girl, easy target, walks down the wrong street…guys like you must hate girls like me.”

“Huh?” Dick asked, bringing his head up.

“Victims,” she said simply, shrugging. “I guess you wouldn’t have a job without us, but don’t you get tired of saving the day?”

Dick shook his head. “We don’t save everyone,” he said quietly. “And guys like me are glad to help out. People should look after one another.” Dick finished cutting her sleeve. He checked her shoulder bone again, noting other small scars and a bullet wound in the shoulder that was less than a year old. This girl had clearly been through hell.

“When did this happen?” he asked about the circular scar on her shoulder where some surgeon had dug a 9mm bullet out of her skin.

“Last year,” she told him. “Two cops.”

Dick’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “The police did this to you? Why?”

She shrugged. “It’s what they do. I walked in on the wrong deal, that’s all,” she told him, her voice chill.

Dick nodded, not really wanting to pursue the subject with her. She was distracted and seemed to be gathering the nerve to ask him something. Dick waited patiently, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. They always asked, sooner or later.

“Do you know him?” she asked quietly as Dick handed her a thick strip of leather.

“Who?”

“The Batman.” The question was asked in a hushed whisper of reverence and fear, which clearly marked the girl as a resident of the East End. They spoke about Batman differently in the Diamond District and in Bristol. She had to be native to Bruce’s hunting grounds, the place where they said the name of the Bat with awe and fear.

“People say you’re his son,” she challenged quietly, interrupting his train of thought.

“Do they?” Dick asked lightly, gripping her arm firmly. “Put the strap in your mouth and don’t be afraid to bite down. This is really going to hurt.” She nodded numbly, and he felt it was safe to continue. “I’ll have to pull and push on your arm, so you’ll have to try and provide some resistance. It’ll be over quickly,” Dick promised.

She clenched her eyes shut and put the leather strap in her mouth. Dick stood, placing his heel on the apex of her shoulder, pushing against the bone with his boot as he provided slow, steady pressure on the muscle joint. It was over in a few seconds, the bone popping back into place easily. Dick had been through the same procedure himself too many times to count and knew the pain vanished once the joint was back in place. The girl choked back a sob, tears threatening from beneath the corners of her eyes.

“Thanks,” she said, her voice rough.

Dick handed her a few over-the-counter painkillers, but she refused. “I can’t. I’m in recovery. No drugs, not even codeine.”

Dick hesitated for a moment. She was trying to kick heroine. His respect for her grew and he patted her gently on the shoulder. “Do you want to rest for a few hours, until daylight? I can give you a rail pass to Gotham, if you’re headed back in that direction.”

“I can’t leave Bludhaven,” she told him, laying down on the hospital bed. “I’m looking for someone. Actually, a lot of someones. The masked guy in Gotham is pretty good at finding people. Think you could help me?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Dick told her, rolling a bandage into a temporary sling for her sore arm. He helped her sit up briefly while he arranged the sling around her shoulder.

“Girls have been disappearing off the streets in Gotham,” she said quietly. “East End runaways, mostly. Street girls, not the working kind. The youngest I’ve heard about is nine, the oldest about twenty-four.”

Dick nodded. That kind of thing wasn’t rare in Gotham, despite the presence of no less than four masked vigilantes working the city. Bruce might not be aware of the situation, but Helena or Oracle would know something. He’d get the team on it right away.

“Why do you think they’ve been vanishing?” he asked her. “And what makes you think they’d be in Bludhaven?”

She shrugged. “A friend of mine is a PI based in Gotham. He ran identity checks against the missing girls and FBI files. These girls haven’t been reported to the FBI database. No one would miss them if they disappeared from the streets. We think it’s the same old thing, someone preying on easy victims.”

“We?” Dick asked.

The girl’s face closed up. “I work with some friends. We thought it’d be a good idea if I came down here and checked to see if something similar was going on.”

“And is it?” he asked, worried that people had been disappearing from the Bludhaven streets without his knowledge.

“I was just about to find out when those guys jumped me.”

Dick finished clearing up the medical supplies, thinking. He found a piece of paper and scribbled an address on the back. “I have to head back out on patrol, but I have a friend I think might be able to help you. A cop. He’ll meet you in two days at this address.”

The direction scribbled on the card was a favorite diner of the Bludhaven PD. Dick planned to be there, in his police uniform, and see what he could accomplish as a legitimate officer of the law. He knew gaining the girl’s trust would be a problem, given how she felt about the police, but Dick knew that he could accomplish more if he worked the streets in an official capacity before resorting to the Nightwing costume. “We’ll figure this out,” Dick promised. “Now, do you want to call those friends of yours in Gotham and let them know what’s going on?”

She blanched and shook her head. “I’ll call them later.” The girl lowered her head and bit her lip, summoning courage. “My name is Holly Robinson.”

Dick smiled broadly, shaking her undamaged right hand. “Nice to meet you, Holly,” he said and turned to leave. “Sleep for a few hours, okay? You’ve had a rough night. Just lock up when you’re done.”

“Are you sure you can trust me?” Holly asked him. Dick grinned at her.

“I have good instincts about people,” he told her. “Mostly.”

*****************


	4. A Meeting

The warehouse looked like an open casting call for a 1970s cop show like _Starsky and Hutch_ or _S.W.A.T._ , an attempt by the producers to inject local ‘color’ into a script calling for a pimp or a drug dealer. There were twelve men gathered in a semi-circle beneath a bare, brilliant light, and they all looked like the media’s version of a well-to-do pimp. Loud shirts, fake fur and pleather, wide-brimmed velvet hats and lots and lots of gold jewelry were the fashions du jour. Diamonds too big to be fake glittered on the pinkies of almost all of them. They were a racially inclusive group: the color of your skin didn’t bar you from this club, only the size of your stable.

Selina eyed them all with naked contempt, breathing through her nose, trying to bite down the anger she felt towards men like them. She was clad in her Catwoman costume, insulated by her own abilities and power, but they still had the ability to frighten her.

Over a forest of ostrich feathers springing from velvet hats, she caught movement in the shadows. Slam was out there, somewhere, watching the meeting he’d set up. He’d lectured her on the importance of her conference with the twelve men: each had the largest stable in the city and by most standards, they were “good” people. None of them ran under-age girls. They didn’t traffic in young boys either, or allow their girls to use wasting drugs like heroin or crack. Saints, by some standards. It didn’t change how Selina felt about them, but it did make the meeting possible.

“You’ll want to hear what they have to say,” Slam had claimed, and Selina trusted Slam more than almost any other man in her life. It didn’t mean she had to like who he thought she should grant an audience to.

“Like I tol you, sweet-cheeks,” Randy, the de-facto leader of the group, was saying, “We’s in trouble.”

“And why is that my problem?” Selina asked him, bored.

Randy didn’t appear to be phased. He blinked behind rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses and licked his lips, stalling. Selina noticed that he’d capped his teeth with gold.

“Our girls is missin’, and we droppin’ like flies.”

“Someone is taking you out?” she translated, proper grammar and elocution more of a barrier than either race or gender.

“Thas right,” Randy confirmed, nodding so vigorously that Selina was afraid the ostrich feather stuck in the brim of his hat might actually take flight. “Two of ma girls, Cherry and Lucinda, they up and went off. Then my man Dee, he get hit by a truck the same day.”

Selina nodded, pretending to understand. It sounded like coincidence, but one after another, the East End pimps told a similar story. Some of their “girls” would disappear and then one of their underlings, usually muscle-for-hire, would turn up dead. The pimps were spooked, claiming that someone was after them. Selina listened halfheartedly to their paranoid ramblings and posturing jive, interrupting when she’d heard enough.

“Why should I care?” she asked softly, her voice laced with enough venom to make the men closest to her back away. “You make a living by hurting women. Now, my partner said you had a business proposal and, while I normally don’t take meetings with ‘men’ like you,” she injected heavy irony into the term, “my partner said I’d find what you had to say interesting. So far, it’s like sitting through _The English Patient_ on a horse tranquilizer.”

The pimps glanced at each other nervously, and Selina wondered if any of them had ever spoken to a woman without a red-hot coat hanger backing them up.

Randy removed his hat, revealing a balding pate. He dropped the playa act long enough to convince Selina of his sincerity and, more importantly, his fear. “We’s bein’ hunted. Maybe you don’t care ‘bout what happens to us, but the girls…”

Selina shrugged, making it clear that she didn’t really care what happened to a bunch of pimps. Randy got the message and leaned closer.

“We’s offering a reward, some serious green. An hundred large for info, another hundred if you can stop the boy who’s takin’ us down.”

She raised her eyebrow. That was quite a sum, even for big-time operators like these who never had less than twelve girls on the stroll at once. Randy alone owned half the massage parlors in Gotham.

“And what makes you think I’d want your money?” she asked him. “I know how you earn it.”

This time, Randy removed his sunglasses. One eye was a milky white, the other a dark brown. Selina guessed he’d lost the pigment in the one eye during a knife fight. She fought to keep a sneer off her face.

“You think know how we make our money?” Selina folded her arms, waiting. “Our girls is clean. No drugs - not the H, anyway - and we don’t hurt em. Not like some brothas…we treat our girls like ladies.”

“Because it doesn’t pay to damage the merchandise,” Selina finished for him. Randy bowed his head in agreement.

“They’s our livelihood. Brothers who bust they heads or drug ‘em ain’t pushing the best product, and everyone knows it.”

“Look,” Selina cut him off, sick of listening to him philosophize about pimp business ethics. Maybe the syntax was different, but all the pimps Selina had ever known spoke the same language: money, punctuated by a closed fist.

“So you raised the money for me to find whoever is hurting you,” Selina surmised. “What makes you think I’d be interested?”

“Your street rep-”

“Is that I pull big scores,” she told him bluntly. “200 large isn’t even a blip on my radar. I’m a thief, and a good one. Not a detective, and not a killer-for-hire.”

The pimps looked at each other, consulting silently. They nodded to Randy, who stood. “We know this ain’t your thing. And maybe the money isn’t sweet enough,” he acknowledged. “But Cat,” he paused, trying to get past the fear enough to convince her, “ain’t no one else to call on this. We got mercs, muscle, bad men who do righteous work. But this is…different. This belongs to a mask.”

That caught her interest. “Why?”

“Jus a feeling,” Randy replied, and the other pimps nodded. Selina’s night vision struggled to compensate for the movement of so much day-glow orange. “This would be the Bat’s thing, only we ain’t seen him around these parts for a good long while. And the other, that lady who works with the girls in Newtown, don’t like the East End. Too hot for her.”

Selina guessed that Randy was talking about the Huntress, the only other vigilante in town who didn’t seem to answer directly to Batman. Selina had only encountered her a few times, and it hadn’t been pretty.

“If I take you up on the reward, I get paid just for looking, no promises, okay?” Selina told them. The pimps had another silent consult and Randy stuck out his hand.

“We got a deal, pretty lady,” he said, working his charm, such as it was. Selina didn’t shake his hand.

She left them there, sitting in the cold circle of bright light.

Selina located Slam and left the warehouse with him, piling into the Plymouth and waiting until they’d cleared the block before speaking. “I feel like I need a shower.”

“Sorry about that,” Slam told her, watching the road. “But I figure, we could use the money. And if someone really is going after the women and their pimps, you’d be involved sooner or later. Might as well score some juice while we’re at it.”

Selina grinned. “You’re a credit to capitalism, Slam,” she told him. Slam nodded, letting her take the wheel while he lit a cigarette. They motored along aimlessly for a while to make sure no one was tailing them. Slam hit a switch on the Plymouth’s dash which would change the pattern of the front and rear lights. Anyone following them through the dark, twisting streets of Old Gotham wouldn’t be able to keep up for long.

A shadow flickered along the roofline and Selina bit her lip. None of the pimps were trying to tail them, but someone was. “Pull over,” Selina asked, and Slam complied without question. She slid out of the passenger door, crouching on the ground to speak to Slam through the barely-open passenger door.

“What?” he asked.

“I think someone has requested the pleasure of my company. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Slam nodded, rolling the Plymouth forward as Selina slammed the door shut and took off up the side of a building. She made the roof quickly, and he was there, waiting.

“Interesting company you’re keeping,” Batman rumbled, and Selina knew he didn’t mean Slam.

“They requested a meeting,” she told him, turning to look at the street below. “And I have some information that you might be interested in. The dead girl on the train, the Jane Doe…”

“Yes?” he asked, urging her to the point. Selina glared at him. He had no respect for the rhythms of dramatic storytelling.

“I think she was connected. She was working the street, at least until she got pregnant.”

Batman nodded, rooted in place among the shadows of the rooftop. “Is this fact or theory?”

“A little of both,” she replied. “Your Jane Doe was a street kid, right? Only, it’s hard to make a living out of collecting old cans and bottles. She was a pretty girl, and she got pregnant somehow. Chances are she made a little money at it before she died.”

“Did any of the men you met with pimp her?” he asked. Selina shook her head.

“No way to know. Chances are, no. Those are high-end rollers. Their girls have a certain status on the street: they wouldn’t mess with a transient. But I think it’s all connected, somehow. The disappearances, the way the pimps are acting like a bunch of frightened sheep… Men like them don’t spook easily. Very little can touch them in the East End. Even when you were down here full-time they were never really afraid of you.”

His mouth and jaw tensed, but he nodded in agreement. Selina respected him for it. He was aware of his shortcomings.

“Speaking of which,” she asked him, “what are you doing in my neighborhood?”

“I wanted to know if you had a chance to speak with your contact in Bludhaven.”

“My contact?” she repeated dryly. “Holly, you mean? She hasn’t called.”

“And you have no way to reach her in an emergency?”

Selina shook her head, thinking he had to be the most anal-retentive man she'd ever met. “She’s working undercover. No one knows about her connection to me in the East End. She’s just another junkie they’ve seen trying to buy product. Her ability to blend in on the streets will get us the information we need in Bludhaven.”

“And what about Jessica Bradshaw?” he asked softly.

Selina glared at him. “We have other priorities. The pimps claim they’ve lost about ten men to freak accidents, and sixteen women have gone missing from Crime Alley in the last few weeks. I’m more interested in finding them than figuring out what happened to some girl from Bristol Heights.”

Batman frowned, and when he spoke, his voice was full of deep, penetrating anger. “I don’t know how you can make those sort of distinctions.”

“And I don’t know how you can’t,” Selina replied. “I suppose the missing girls from this part of town don’t matter to you.”

Batman sighed, exasperated. “I don’t want to fight with you about this. I will look into the girls missing from Crime Alley. I will make it a priority.”

Selina nodded in approval, wondering when, exactly, he’d started giving in to her so easily. “They gave me another lead, something I doubt you’ll be happy about.”

He folded his arms, waiting for her to finish.

“Spend much time in Newtown, near the yacht basin?”

Batman shook his head. Newtown was in the dead-zone between the Botanical Gardens and Amusement Mile. During the day, the place was crowded with tourists but it was deserted at night. As a result, it was a low-activity sector. There was the occasional mugging or act of vandalism, but it couldn’t compete with the war zone of Crime Alley or the high-risk sectors in the business core. The close proximity of the Rogers Yacht Basin made real estate in Newtown valuable, and thus heavily patrolled by the Gotham PD. Someone else protected the neighborhood.

“That's Huntress’ territory.”

Selina nodded. “Apparently she’s been playing big sister to the few working girls left in Newtown since the post-No Man's Land facelift there. The yuppies may have invaded, but there are still a few dark corners and blind alleys in that part of the city,” Selina told him. “Your lady friend must find it challenging work.”

“What do you suggest?”

“We should go have a conversation with her about the missing girls.” Selina made ready to leap off the building. “And I’m always up for a family reunion.”

*****************


	5. Of Ships and Shoes and Sealing Wax

Selina was a true cat - she hated the water. She detested swimming, although she could manage when forced to do so. Boats were another story. Be it a rowboat or a luxury pleasure craft like the ones parked in the Rogers docking facility, she felt a sick gnawing in her stomach when she considered climbing aboard a ship, rocking with the waves…

“Something wrong?”

“Nope,” she gulped.

“You look a little green.”

“I’m fine,” she assured him. Beside her, Batman shrugged, apparently deciding that Selina’s physical condition didn’t matter unless she began to vomit. They were waiting for Huntress to appear on what Batman assured her was a regular patrol route along the yacht basin. They were posed on the roof of a waterfront warehouse. The bitter wind cut like a knife that high up, and Selina watched as it ruffled the murky black water of the harbor. She decided that the past few hours had been some of the bleakest of her life. Normally she liked a night out on the town, but ice crystals had actually formed on the surface of her costume and the leather suit crackled when she moved.

What bothered her most was Batman’s resistance to the deep cold. He had been crouched beside her, motionless, for the last two hours. She didn’t doubt his patience or his stamina, but she wasn’t in the mood to test her own.

“So, no sign of your estranged daughter. Sure this is her regular route?” she asked pointedly, breath condensing white beyond her lips. He merely scanned the dock area again with high-tech binoculars. “Aren’t you…cold?” she ventured to ask. Batman looked at her sharply.

“You don’t have to be here,” he growled.

“Hey, you invited me. And I thought you’d appreciate the company,” Selina replied, rubbing her hands together. She’d gladly trade gloves with him now: those puppies were probably thermal-insulated and she’d heard through the grapevine that his Batsuit was designed to withstand Mr. Freeze’s best and brightest new designs.

He shot her a look that very clearly indicated her company was not necessary. Selina narrowed her eyes, shifting position to try and coax some feeling back into her legs.

“Think of something,” she tried, asking a second later, “Animal, mineral, or vegetable?”

He didn’t respond.

“It’s a game,” Selina explained. “Twenty questions. Helps pass the time.”

“So does patience,” he muttered. She was undeterred.

“C’mon. This stakeout wasn’t my brilliant idea, and I’d rather be home in a warm bath right now. So why not pull that enormous carrot out of your…”

She stopped, silenced by a tiny shift in his posture. He motioned gently with his left hand and she saw immediately what it was he’d noticed. A long, sleek luxury yacht was slipping silently into the crowded harbor, running lights off. That was a dangerous, difficult maneuver at the best of times, but the night was moonless, the stars obscured by winter storm clouds. The bitter cold slowed reflexes, made the steerage crew careless as they fantasized about warm, soft beds. All it would take is a slight miscalculation and in the dark, the ship would plow into the wharf. Batman had sensed the potential for disaster before she was even aware of a problem.

Below on the water, the dark yacht cut through the waves and Selina caught the hint of a strangled yelp buried beneath the dull hum of the ship’s engines. It was all he needed. Batman stood, his muscles warm and relaxed despite the cold. “Let’s go,” he ordered, unclipping the grappling gun from his utility belt. Selina uncoiled her whip, uncertain. She was confident in her ability to make the jump from the roof of the warehouse to the dock below, but the looming black water beneath made her pause.

He was gone, a huge black mass moving though the night. She tracked his fall, eyes riveted to the silhouette of his scalloped cape and uncontrolled dive into the oblivion of night. She followed, fearlessly.

They hit the wooden dock softly. Selina curled into a ball and tumbled with the force of her fall, whip snapping close behind her. Batman landed on his feet, the recoil in his jumpline working to slow his descent. They moved towards the docking boat from different angles, jumping aboard as it slipped past them soundlessly.

Selina found her footing, listening for the blare of an alarm triggered by their boarding of the yacht. She could tell he was doing a more thorough job, aided by electronic gizmos he’d concealed in his cowl to sonically penetrate the wooden decks, searching for some sign that they were not alone. He waved her on, signaling for her to follow him below. Selina didn’t hear anything but yielded to his sonar equipment. She knew his mask didn’t come with X-ray vision, but almost anything else was standard issue.

They worked their way down into the bowels of the ship. Batman took point and Catwoman followed, moving with a grace and surety surpassing his own. She had a true thief’s ability to fold her presence, barely disturbing the atmosphere in an enclosed space. Selina could pass inches from her mark and they would never feel her. He envied her that skill; he relied more and more on shadow and misdirection in the last few years, and it was a rare feat that he could even sneak up on Commissioner Gordon anymore. Despite years of training and then teaching such methods, he had never truly possessed Catwoman’s talent for hiding in plain sight.

They moved aft, nearer the steady hum of the engines. Batman felt her pause behind him and he turned, looking a question at her. Selina waved towards a closed cabin door and he shook his head, pointing to where he knew the engine room to be. Halt the ship’s progress, he planned, then search the rest of the yacht. If the vessel crashed into the pier at full steam, the resulting damage and potential for casualties would skyrocket.

She ignored him, checking for infrared sensors on the cabin door. There was no sign of special security, but her instincts were on full red alert. Something was wrong here, and Batman didn’t seem to sense it. That alone was reason to worry.

Selina turned to him, ready to argue, when the hum of the engines increased. The ship lurched forward and Selina nearly lost her balance, pitching backward. He caught her easily, his own footing unaffected.

“My secret’s out: I’m no sailor,” she whispered to him just as he let her go. “I’m going to check that cabin.” She didn’t wait for an argument, and neither did he. Batman was just opening the engine room door as she finished with the lock on the cabin. That door swung open easily, stopping short in the tiny space as it hit a bulkhead. The cabin was a media room of some kind, all close-circuit TV monitors and a security system sophisticated enough to make her drool.

“New Beta-Level encryptions, huh?” she muttered, checking the system protocols. The whole setup smelled: there was no security to speak of above deck and Selina knew they hadn’t tripped a silent alarm when they’d boarded. Everything was keyed to this room, but it wasn’t clear why. She watched on one of the tiny monitors as Batman navigated the cramped, noisy confines of the engine room. The pinhole security camera zoomed in on him and a blinking red light on the panel before her engaged. Selina considered the light for a few seconds, her head tipped to one side, listening.

And then the ice-grip of fear tightened around her heart.

“Bruce!” she screamed, her cry bouncing down the empty corridors of the death ship. She charged out of the cabin, meeting him in the hall. Selina grabbed his hand and raced topside. He didn’t fight her, but she knew he didn’t understand the danger they were in. Hadn’t felt it.

As soon as they reached the upper deck, he paused, asking “What the hell…?” just as the world exploded.

The explosion worked its way upwards, beginning in the engine room and then tearing through the vacant decks on its way up. The varnished wooden deck rocked beneath their feet and this time, Selina kept her balance. The dark night was engulfed in flame and all around them on the dark water the world burned. Batman tightened his grip on her hand just as the second blast hit, and he threw her behind him. The blast wave knocked them both into the icy waters of Gotham Harbor.

***************************

Batman hit the water hard, landing improperly as he tried to lend Selina some cover with his body. Something fizzled and throbbed in his ear and his head erupted in pain. He had time to worry about the electronic earpiece in his cowl just as the icy water began to swallow him. Batman tumbled through the water as it clawed against his heavy body armor and weighted cape. He couldn’t see: the blast had damaged the nightvision in his mask and he was swimming blind in -86° water. The current clawed at him again and he found the clasp that would release his cape. With the weight gone, his downward momentum slowed but the water still dragged. He kicked hard as the ringing in his head grew exponentially and he exhaled in pain.

Darkness fell.

*******************

Catwoman lost her breath as she hit the water, the cold snapping her senses. She pulled off her mask, the night vision useless. Batman had hit the water first and she’d lost him in the dark harbor. They had moments, seconds at best, before the cold water would make it impossible for them to reach the shore. She righted herself, using the direction of the air bubbles as a guide and surfaced gasping in the freezing air. She was alone.

Selina didn’t panic, not at first. While she was at best a marginal swimmer, she knew Batman had spent a lifetime perfecting his survival skills. She knew he would be able to hold his breath and find his way to the surface, but the fear that had been gathering since they’d boarded the boat returned full-force, hitting her as hard as the shock of the cold water. She began to search for him, diving again and again, her teeth chattering and her muscles growing slowly unresponsive.

Selina had nearly given up when her foot made contact with flesh and bone in the black water. Batman. She grabbed hold and pulled him to the surface. He was cold and lifeless in her arms.

She towed him to shore, struggling with his weight. “It’s Lean Cuisine time for you, buddy,” Selina shivered, aiming for the docks illuminated by the sinking flame of the ship. Finally, they reached the pier. She pulled him out of the water, gasping as the winter wind bit into her. Selina checked his pulse: it was present, but faint.

“Here goes,” she muttered, beginning chest compressions. After a set of fifteen, she brought her mouth to his, breathing for him. “C’mon,” she ordered. Finally, he turned his head as his powerful, heavily-conditioned lungs expelled the harbor water. Behind them, the yacht was a blossom of dying fire. She watched it, checking his raspy breathing, trying to stop shaking.

“Selina,” he said, and when she could, she looked at him. “I can’t hear anything.”

  


*****************


	6. Stolen Season

They made the way back to her apartment slowly. Batman was silent, leaning heavily against her. Selina kept watch. They were in the heart of Crime Alley and to be caught in such a vulnerable state would be a death sentence in this neighborhood.

Finally, after a breathless half-hour, they reached her building. Batman struggled with the stairs and she cast a worried glance at him. They stumbled through the door and she helped him to the couch, slipping from beneath his arm as he sank down gratefully.

She faced him, trusting in his ability to read her lips. “Leslie?” she asked. He shook his head.

“She’s attending a conference in Metropolis,” he told her. “It’s my inner-ear: the electronics in my cowl were fried by the explosion.”

“And the cold water probably didn’t help,” Selina muttered, heading for the bathroom. She gathered towels and started a hot shower. Returning to the living room, she crouched before him.

“You’ll need to change,” she explained. “I’ve started a shower. If the cold…”

Batman nodded, cutting her off. He stood unsteadily and she worried that his eardrum had burst in the water. His balance and coordination had been terrible in the last hour, but that could have been the lingering effects of the explosion.

He touched her hand to get her attention and Selina drained any sign of concern from her face. Detached, she looked up at him. He was watching her and she thought he wanted to ask her something. Selina had expected him to make for the bathroom and was preparing to help him go when he stopped her.

“I’ll need your help with this,” he said, reaching up and behind his neck to remove his cowl.

Selina didn’t react. Slowly, she reached up to accept the mask as he peeled the Nomex away from his face. She watched, fascinated at the transformation. As the mask of the Bat fell away, his lips and jawline seemed to soften, become more…human, she supposed. Bruce’s blue eyes were steel, watching her intently for some sign of surprise. She didn’t bother to lie with her body language.

“How long have you known?” he asked softly. Selina shrugged, tossing his discarded cowl onto the couch.

“About as long as you’ve known about me, I guess.” She tugged his gloves off, putting them with the mask. “I mean, I’m not the World’s Greatest Detective, but I have kissed both Bruce Wayne and Batman before. There was never any difference.”

He frowned, having trouble concentrating on the movement of her lips. He knew hypothermia was beginning to set in. It was ridiculous, of course. He’d trained himself to remain conscious and active in much colder water than could found in Gotham Harbor in November, but for some reason, all of his preparations had failed him. He would need to design a new protocol, Bruce decided, pulling off the Kevlar-lined tunic and shucking his leotard quickly, knowing the hot shower was becoming more necessary by the second. Selina handed him a towel and he wrapped it around his waist, noting the slightly blue tinge of his skin. Selina had stripped off the Catwoman costume and she pulled his arm over her shoulders, ignoring her nudity.

“Bathroom’s this way,” she told him and he stopped short of revealing that he’d memorized the floor plan of her apartment long ago. “Hurry,” Selina whispered. “We both took a dive in the East River, and we’re starting to smell like it.”

He gasped as the hot spray of water gushed over his cold, tired muscles, burning through his exhaustion with tiny pinpricks of heat. Bruce closed his eyes rather than watch Selina as she sagged against the tiled wall, absorbing the heat and steam with unadulterated pleasure. He opened his eyes when he felt her touch, tracing the long, ugly ridge of an old scar across his stomach. His body was mottled by acid burns, knife wounds and bullet holes. If any of Bruce Wayne’s occasional flings had ever made it to the stage of seeing him shirtless, he would have had a lot of explaining to do.

“Better?” she asked, her hands rubbing warmth into his chest muscles. Selina’s eyes lingered over the old scars, focusing on the remains of a whip’s cruel lash. He took her hand, his large palm swallowing hers.

“That wasn’t one of yours,” he told her. Selina knew he hadn’t misread the motion of her lips.

“But I’m responsible for a few of them, aren’t I?” she asked, casting green eyes downward, scanning the rest of his body. Even his legs were a white mass of scar tissue.

Bruce nodded, honesty forcing him to add, “And I gave you a few.” He touched a faded pink scar on her shoulder, caused by the razor-sharp wing of a Batarang. His own diamond-threaded nylon rope had left miniscule abrasions on her wrists, and James Gordon’s gun had left a 9mm bullet wound in her thigh.

Selina closed her eyes, breathing in the steam and concentrating on the warm, sure touch of his hands on her naked shoulder. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that his body had begun to react to the warm water and her presence. His face, typically, betrayed nothing, and she angled her mouth to touch his, her breasts brushing against his chest.

Water surged around them, silently.

*******************************

Slam struggled at the door to the apartment, juggling a brown paper grocery bag and a cardboard carry-out tray which held two steaming cups of coffee. He finally managed to fish the key from his pocket just as he tipped the tray slightly, some of the scalding java sloshing over the rim of the cup and onto his hand.

“Creesus!” he cursed in surprise, wondering why the little mob-run coffee joint on the corner felt it didn’t need to lid anything. Just because they used the place for money laundering didn’t mean they had to endanger customers.

He slammed the key home and pushed the door open with his foot. Selina’s apartment was a federal disaster area, as usual. He set the groceries and coffee down on the kitchen counter, shaking the now-cold liquid off his hand as he snuck a peak at the fridge. It was as empty as Slam had expected: there was nothing in the Maytag but a bunch of cat food and some mustard. Slam shook his head, unloading the brown paper bag from the deli down the street. Orange juice, bagels and low-fat cream cheese went into the fridge, other staples like pasta and that chicken-noodle soup she loved so much he stowed in the cupboard.

Slam heard a soft thump from the bedroom and guessed that it was Nola or one of the other cats back from a night on the prowl. The shower had been on since he walked in and Selina never took any less than forty minutes in the bathroom. Women, Slam thought, smiling as he did some dishes and worked on the stack of old newspapers and magazines occupying all available counter space in the kitchen.

Finally he heard the shower cut off and Selina emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped loosely around her head and a larger one covering the essentials on that beautiful body of hers.

Slam tried not to admire the view. “I hate to say it,” he called out, “but you’ll never make the cover of _Good Housekeeping_.”

He’d startled her, and that was a hell of a feat. Selina froze in the narrow hallway between the kitchen and the bathroom, whipping the towel off her head. Slam tried not to grin. Her short, sleek, stylized haircut was a tousled mess, most of it sticking straight up and out at ninety-degree angles. Focusing on her wild appearance, he didn’t notice her eyes dart towards the closed bedroom door.

“What are you doing here?” she asked coolly, finger-combing her hair until it had regained its customary shape.

Slam held up a scrub brush and a soapy bowl. “I also brought coffee and bagels,” he explained, falling silent as he watched a drip of water slide down her neck into the deep notch in her collarbone, then lower. Slam blinked and Selina pulled the short white towel around her chest more tightly. He caught a glimpse of fresh white bandages wrapped around her ribcage.

“What happened?” he asked, moving closer to inspect the damage. Selina shied away and he backed off, wondering what the hell had gotten into her. Even after things had ended between them, Selina had never been shy about her body.

“Just an explosion,” Selina explained nonchalantly. “Bruised a few ribs. I’ll have to go to Leslie’s clinic later.” Her dark green eyes didn’t reveal anything, and Slam thought that in itself was unusual.

“What were you doing last night?” he asked, moving forward again to inspect her ribs. Again, Selina retreated, and Slam froze in the hallway.

“This a bad time, or something?” he asked.

“Or something,” she replied, turning down the hallway and heading for the bedroom. Slam set down the scrubbie and bowl, shaking the soapy water off his hands and rolling down his shirtsleeves. He caught his reflection in the door of the microwave, his weathered face and oft-broken nose cast in dim black detail. He sighed, feeling as though he spent most of his time apologizing to her.

“Hey, I’m going down to Bludhaven this morning,” he called after her. She didn’t respond and so he followed her down the hall, knocking softly on her bedroom door. “Want to come with me? I’m just gonna check up on the squirt, give her some info she asked for…”

The door pushed open and he finally figured it out. Slam took in the crumpled bed sheets and the faint musk of just-done sex. His eyes flew to Selina as she stood before the mirror, watching his reflection, waiting. Slam felt like the biggest chump in the world.

“What…what is this?” he asked, keeping his voice low, calm. Selina shrugged tiredly, leaning up against the dresser, her hip bumping the heavy piece of furniture. He saw it then, that ‘I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing’ expression she’d worn so often around him, especially after they’d made love. Only now, that expression was somebody else’s problem.

It still hurt to see it.

“Is he here?” Slam asked, mind reeling, trying to figure out who she’d taken into her sanctuary. In all those brief, desperate months last year they had never used her place. It was always at his apartment, or in his office downtown…

“He just left,” Selina told Slam quietly, not meeting his eyes.

Slam shook his head. “I was in the kitchen the whole time. How did he…?”

“Through the window,” she replied in that same dead tone.

Without a word, Slam turned and left her there, stalking into the kitchen to grab his hat and winter coat. She beat him to the door, her slim body barricading him in. Slam didn’t doubt that if she wanted him to stay, she could keep him there by force.

“I’m not letting you leave angry,” Selina told him, emerald eyes glittering. “Yell if you want. Scream, pound the walls, anything. You know I own the building and none of the other tenants will complain.” Selina had bought the entire apartment complex under a false name years ago, and she took care of the property taxes like a good citizen. If anyone cared to investigate, she had six people paying rent on the little units downstairs. But her own living space didn’t show up on any blueprints the city had. Selina Kyle knew how to hide.

Slam stared into the middle distance between them, feeling a sharp pain in his jaw. He realized he’d been clenching his teeth to stop himself from telling her what he thought about the whole loony situation. He tried out his own voice in his head a couple of times until he knew he had it under control. Finally he spoke.

“Only one guy in the city who uses the window as a door,” he said carefully, putting it together. “One guy, and one girl. Maybe it’s something about the masks. You never seem to stay the night.”

Selina continued to watch him. She didn’t flinch at the accusation. Slam was right. She’d woken up alone in an empty bed, all trace of Bruce’s presence gone but the lingering warmth of his large body on the sheets beside her. She thought that he’d held her, afterwards, whispering something to her, but she’d fallen asleep before she could figure out what he was saying. And she thought she remembered him kissing her deeply, regretfully.

“Aren’t you going to give me a lecture about having strange men in the house?” Selina asked lightly, trying to dispel the gravity of the moment.

“You don’t need a lecture, you need a crack upside the head if you’re serious about this…thing with him,” he told her, angry and afraid for her.

Selina shook her head. “It’s not a ‘thing’, Slam. It was one night. And I’m not letting you leave until you understand why-”

“Why you’re fucking that self-righteous bastard?” Slam cut her off, immediately regretting his words but too disturbed to rephrase them. “Unless you’ve forgotten that he won’t exactly approve of our operations here. Or me, or Holly.”

“He already knows about it, Slam,” Selina said, taking a deep breath. “All of it. He’s too good a detective not to have figured it all out. And he still allows me to do the work, because he knows that my methods are necessary down here.”

Slam clenched his fits, crumpling his hat. “What, now you need his approval?”

Selina shrugged. “It’s his city, Slam. Forget that and he’d take us all down.”

“How can you…” Slam tried, stumbling over what it was he was trying to ask her. “How can you be with someone you have nothing in common with? Who disapproves of what you are?”

“This wasn’t about Catwoman and Batman,” Selina said carefully. “It was about who we are when the masks come off.”

“And who is he?”

Selina’s head came up and she met his eyes. Slam faced her evenly, demanding an explanation, and she felt a rush of feeling for him. Love and friendship and anger and trust rumbled together, warring it out in her already-exhausted mind. In the end, she told him the only thing she could.

“Someone I can’t betray,” she said simply, refusing him the truth.

Slam sucked in air through his nose, closing his eyes, knowing in a heartbeat that she’d cut him out, thrown up another barrier. It had taken him so long to get past her defenses and earn her friendship. Now it was all gone. Over a man whose name she couldn’t even say in daylight.

He pushed past her silently, shoving her aside with his shoulder. This time, Selina didn’t try to stop him. He left her there, shaking in the doorway of her lonely apartment.

*****************  



	7. The Conversation

The diner was deserted: it was the dead hour between the breakfast rush and the lunch crowd. Shift change was happening over at the station, and since the small coffee shop catered almost exclusively to Bludhaven’s finest, the place was as dead as disco.

The Silver Side Up Diner had opened before the Miranda case, back before Rodney King and Serpico, when cops were free to beat confessions out of suspects and deny people their one phone call. Those brutal days were a fresh memory in Bludhaven. Most of the city’s small police force thought of the golden era of carte-blanche law-enforcement with sighs of longing.

Slam eyed the few late-morning patrons over a cup of black, bitter coffee. His mood hadn’t improved much during the drive down from Gotham, and shooting the breeze with a bunch of old cops who carried throw-down pieces and took a cut from the hookers in Desolation Row didn’t appeal to him.

Slam had cop friends all over the tri-county area. It was a necessity in his line of work. A licensed PI depended on the police for survival. They were a lifeline to facts, case files and info even the media didn’t have access to. Didn’t mean Slam had to like them, or how they earned their dirty money. And Gotham cops were sainted angels compared to the ‘Haven uniforms.

The bell above the door jingled, a soft, pretty sound in the geared-for-testosterone furnishings of the diner. Slam stood a little and waved at Holly. The kid was looking around, nervous at being so close to an old beat cop wolfing down the platter special at the counter. She relaxed once Slam caught her attention. She crossed the restaurant, and slid into the booth across from him.

He knew Holly was undercover, trying to blend in with the street girls they were hoping to find, but her appearance still shocked him. Her short, brightly-colored hair was dull and matted and she’d clearly been wearing the same baggy, shapeless clothing and filthy combat boots for a week. There were deep shadows beneath her eyes and Slam could only guess at what she’d been eating.

“Hey, kiddo,” Slam smiled, turning over the coffee cup on the saucer in front of Holly and gesturing for the waitress. Holly looked him over carefully.

“Where’s Selina?” she asked immediately. Slam shrugged and lit a cigarette, his metal Zippo clicking empty. Almost out of fuel.

“She couldn’t make it down,” Slam explained, keeping his voice level. Holly narrowed her eyes.

“You two had a fight, didn’t you?” she asked, sipping hungrily at the coffee. Slam pointed out a few things on the menu to the hovering waitress, who nodded and left them alone.

“I brought you the info you wanted,” Slam tried.

Holly’s eyes flashed. She was more stubborn than Slam. “Tell me what happened.”

Slam sighed deeply in surrender, taking a short drag on his cigarette. Why did all of the women in his life have to be this pushy? “Don’t…don’t make a big thing out of it, okay? We were just angry with each other. People fight.”

“And what do ‘people’ fight about?” Holly asked, sounding like Selina. Slam knew she hated being spoken to as a child. After all, Holly was almost nineteen, but Slam still thought of her as a little sister. And he was firmly convinced that there were some things you didn’t discuss with a kid.

Holly kicked him gently under the table and Slam finally answered the question. “She’s sleeping with him.”

Holly’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes hardened a little. “Who?”

“The pointy-eared control freak,” Slam informed her, sipping at his own coffee. Holly slumped back in the booth, her hands falling away from the warm mug before her.

“When did this happen?”

“Dunno,” Slam replied. “Since last night, anyway. But with Selina, it’s hard to tell.”

Holly nodded slightly in agreement. Selina’s behavior defied all rationalization, even at the best of times. It was one of the things Holly loved about her.

“Is it…serious?” she asked as Slam lit another Duke, a contraband cigarette brought up from the tobacco country in North Carolina and sold on the black market for fifty percent retail. Slam hated paying federal taxes on cigarettes, and so he smoked whatever was on the truck that week.

“I don’t think even she knows,” he replied. “But it’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Bad for her, or bad for us?” Holly asked, wrapping her cold fingers around the warm coffee cup. Slam wanted to respond with a clichéd ‘what’s-bad-for-her-IS-bad-for-us’ statement, but he kept his mouth shut. Holly continued. “If he’s as good as he’s supposed to be, there’s probably not a lot he doesn’t know. And Selina wouldn’t say anything if she thought he could touch us with it, use the work to hurt the mission.”

Slam nodded at the subtext buried beneath Holly’s coded language. The work was what they did for survival, operating in a gray area where they were too slick for the Gotham PD and not big enough to attract the Batman’s interest. Scams, robberies, forgeries - Selina’s work, what she was best at. Most of it bled into what they called the Mission, the crusade to help people in the East End. Working as a team, Selina, Slam and Holly cheated drug dealers and stole from the Mafia, funneling the profits into community interests like Leslie Tompkins’s Crime Alley Clinic and the ill-fated East End Community Center.

They had smaller, less dangerous stuff on the side. Slam had a nice scam going with on with would-be mercenaries, promising to connect white-pride psychos with race wars in Africa or South America in exchange for a fee. The whole thing was done through trade ads in hate newspapers and ended in blind mail drops. Slam collected the score and the White Nation was short another soldier. No big loss.

What made Slam nervous were the bigger jobs, things like taking down dirty borough cops or going after the drug kingpins of the East End. The payoffs were bigger but the risks were sky-high. Selina had always shrugged off the thought of reprisal from mobsters or gangs in the East End, at least until they’d taken down the Black Mask’s operation and had nearly gone down themselves.

Since then, they’d played it safe with strictly small-time busts. Slam knew Selina was getting hungry for bigger prey again. She was the greatest thief he’d ever known and she should have been pulling international jobs with a top crew instead of working out of a burnt-out old PI’s office with a goodhearted doctor and a recovering heroin addict. It made him sad sometimes, to consider what Selina might have been if she hadn’t been raised by a bunch of freaks. But then, he wondered the same about most of the people in Gotham.

“Slam?” Holly asked. “Earth to Slam. Come in, Mr. Bradley!”

“Creesus! I’m listening to you, okay?” Slam said quickly, wondering how long he’d been lost. More than a few minutes, given the concerned expression on Holly’s face. He frowned, stamping out a half-finished Duke. “I wish she’d choose her friends a little more carefully,” Slam muttered with ironic emphasis on ‘friends’. “He can’t approve of what it is we do, can he? I mean, he can’t approve of her if half the stuff said about him is true.”

Holly was quiet, trying to find answers at the bottom of her cup of cold, black caffeine. “You don’t think he loves her?”

Slam furrowed his brow, pretending to think it over. He marveled at Holly’s ability to believe in a thing like love, given her history.

“I’m not sure a guy like that knows how to love. Something like that is a priority in life, especially with a woman like Selina. I don’t think the Bat is capable of the kind of choices you need to make to build a life with someone.”

“What makes you say that?” Holly asked, not arguing, listening.

“He comes from the same place she does.” Slam’s blue eyes were cobalt, hard and flat. “In that place, there’s a price for survival, and that’s your capacity for trust.”

“Is that…” Holly hesitated, biting her lower lip. “Is that why you and Selina…”

Slam sighed, his shoulders slumping. He’d spent a lot of time wondering when the squirt was going to ask about that.

“It wasn’t Selina’s fault,” he told her, eager to take the blame for the whole mess himself. “I should have known better. I know how she came up, Holly,” Slam said, thinking of the smoking remains of that Chronicle file. “It wasn’t right to get close to her the way I did. Real intimacy can’t happen if you’re only doing something somebody once paid you to do.”

Holly nodded. She knew better than Slam that sex never meant anything to Selina other than a meal ticket; Holly had felt the same way. They’d both seen it all and done most of it for money and Holly didn’t romanticize it, at least until Karon…

“I just…I just need to know if he’ll hurt her,” Slam whispered. “You’ve had more experience with him than me.”

Holly was silent, her thoughts lost some twelve years in the past. “Maggie liked him,” she said quietly. “She thought…she thought he could save Selina.”

“When did he ever meet Maggie? I thought-”

“Selina never told you?” Holly asked, shaking her head in amazement.

“I didn’t want to ask about the past,” Slam told her truthfully. “It never mattered to me anyway.”

“She met him when Selina and I were still working the streets. We belonged to a pimp named Stan.”

“Belonged?” Slam asked, raising an eyebrow. It was difficult to imaging anyone owning a woman like Selina.

“Sure,” Holly replied, her tone dark with disgust. “Way it is out on the street, people are owned like they’re a pet or a piece of furniture. Stan owned us. I worked the streets for him, but Selina got moved inside.”

Slam had kept company with enough call girls to understand the distinction. The difference between hooking on the street and working a specialty business indoors was like working at McDonald’s instead of a four-star restaurant. The money was about the same, but there was a different kind of status attached to it. And in the specialty sex trade, the tips were better.

Holly continued with her story. “One day, Stan beat up Selina pretty bad. Raped her and dumped her in the alleyway behind some church. That’s when all this started.” Holly gestured with a sweeping motion; Slam guessed she meant Catwoman and the assorted Gotham lunacy that came with being one of Batman’s rouges.

“Selina got a phone number from some cop. That’s how she met Ted Grant, learned how to take care of herself. And we left Stan.” Holly’s eyes darkened. “I know Selina only meant to scare him…but when she’s angry, she’s capable of anything. She scratched his face up pretty bad, and Stan wanted blood in return. So he took Maggie.”

“I thought they hadn’t seen each other since the state had separated them,” Stan asked, smoking quietly, digesting the story.

“They met by accident,” Holly told him. “Maggie was at a convent in Gotham, preparing to take her final vows. They ran into each other, and I guess Stan overheard them talking. He grabbed Maggie to hurt Selina. But that was a bad move,” Holly said, getting into it. “Kidnapping a citizen, a nun, got Batman on the case.”

“And that’s how he met Maggie? Trying to rescue her from some two-bit pimp?”

Holly nodded. “Stan was a little crazy. Selina found him first, holed up in some abandoned theater in the Bowery. Batman got there just in time to save Maggie from a hundred-foot fall off a catwalk.”

“And Stan?”

Holly shrugged. “Stan tripped. Or maybe he fell. Maggie didn’t see it, and Selina never really told me what happened.”

“So maybe she killed him,” Slam concluded. Holly nodded warily. “And the Batman knows all this? Kid, you’ve heard the same rumors I have. The Batman doesn’t kill, and he’d never look the other way if it came to murder. Selina couldn’t be guilty.”

“Maybe that’s why Maggie liked him,” Holly finished, making her point. “Because he didn’t take Selina down for what happened to Stan.”

Slam lit another cigarette. “But he tried to bring her down after that, didn’t he? Not for Stan, but for other things…”

“If he’d really been trying,” Holly interrupted, shooting him a look that Slam knew women rehearsed in their mirrors, “he would have succeeded. I’ve heard the same things you have, remember? He doesn’t do mercy, at least for criminals, but he believes in justice. And he knows that Selina doesn’t belong in prison.”

“Or maybe he’s just playing with her until he takes her down for real,” Slam theorized through a cloud of smoke. “We don’t know. But if Maggie vouches for him, and Leslie…we’ll just have to trust the judgment of our betters, kid.” Slam didn’t sound convinced, and Holly didn’t look as if she bought it either. The waitress finally came by and Holly flashed a smile, digging into the food set down before her.

Slam requested another cup of coffee, checking his watch. “About the info you requested…that cop is going to be here soon. I’ll give you the highlights now, and you tell me what you think.” Slam pulled out a thick sheaf of papers from the briefcase on the seat beside him and plopped them down on the Formica tabletop with an air of authority.

“Your friend’s got quite a history,” he told her. Holly glared at him, one of her attempts at intimidation that made Slam want to tweak her nose or pinch her cheek. She was so young.

“He’s not my ‘friend’,” Holly clarified. “You know how I feel about…them.” She inclined her head towards the uniforms sitting at the counter, not touching the folder. Holly was sitting in the middle of the Bludhaven PD’s favorite diner, one of “their” places, enemy territory for a girl who had been beaten, molested and intimidated by men carrying badges since she was eight years old. Uniforms made Holly nervous, but she didn’t trust plainclothes detectives either. Two of them had put a bullet in her arm last year.

“Why are you interested in this rookie anyway?” Slam asked. “You didn’t explain on the phone.”

“I don’t know if I can explain it,” Holly said quickly, nodding her thanks to the waitress for a refill of her coffee. Holly then dumped enough sugar into the hot brown liquid to make Slam’s teeth ache. “This mask…he helped me out of a tough spot a few days ago, and he vouched for the cop. Said if anyone could help me find those missing girls, this Officer Grayson could get it done.”

“Look, kid, what makes you think a cop could figure this mess out when we couldn’t? I can’t make heads or tails of it, and you haven’t been able to make an ID.” Holly lowered her eyes at the reminder of her failure, and Slam’s mouth tensed. He touched her hand and Holly looked up. “I’m just saying that we’ve got our ear closer to the street than any cop in Bludhaven or Gotham. If we can’t crack this thing, one of them sure as hell isn’t going to. I think you’d have a better shot with a mask than teaming with some uniform beat cop.”

“Maybe I’m tired of working with masks,” Holly said softly. Slam narrowed his eyes but said nothing. He pushed the folder towards her gently.

“Well, you’re in luck. Grayson doesn’t sound like your typical cop, anyway.”

Holly flipped the folder open, scanning the first page of Slam’s thick report. She read the first page aloud. “Officer Richard D. Grayson, Bludhaven PD. Rank of lieutenant. He’s young,” she said, and Slam tried not to smile. Grayson was a few years older than Holly.

“They usually don’t get Lieutenant so quickly, but he was shot in the line of duty so they pinned a medal on his chest,” Slam explained.

“Looks familiar,” Holly muttered, examining an Academy shot of Grayson in full dress uniform. He was handsome, light blue eyes sparkling with a promise of fun even in the serious graduation portrait.

“He should,” Slam said, leaning across the table to flip to the next page. “Guess whose son he is.”

Holly’s eyes scanned the report, widening in surprise. “Wayne? He’s Bruce Wayne’s kid?”

“Adopted, and only recently. Selina’s millionaire bachelor seems to collect kids,” Slam said off-handedly. “Grayson’s parents died in an accident when he was pretty young. Wayne raised him but they had some kind of falling-out, and Wayne took in a new kid, Todd something. Most of this has been pretty well buried, especially what happened to the newer one.”

“What happened?” Holly asked, flipping back to Grayson’s picture.

“Died overseas,” Slam replied. “I have a friend at Family Services who says they’re investigating Wayne for evidence of child abuse. Seems Grayson had a long stay in hospital about ten years ago. Someone nearly beat him to death with a baseball bat.”

Holly dropped the file on the table in disgust. “Selina never mentioned any of this to me. When she talks about Wayne at all, I always got the impression that he was a nice guy.”

Slam shrugged. “She and Wayne were over by the time he started playing den mother. And anyway, there’s nothing conclusive in the file. Family Services is gonna have a hell of a time making a case against Wayne on circumstantial evidence alone, especially after what happened to him last year with that murder case. The law in Gotham is going to need something rock-solid before they go after Wayne again.”

“Do you really think he…hurt Grayson and the other boy?” Holly asked, feeling sorry for Grayson even though he was a cop.

“I don’t know, kid. Maybe you could ask him,” Slam suggested, pocketing his cigarettes and gathering up the newspaper he’d been reading before Holly came in. “Read over the file after you meet with him. Decide for yourself. And Holly,” Slam warned, “Don’t feel too sorry for him. Remember he stands to inherit about a quarter of a billion dollars after Wayne kicks off.”

Holly nodded, still looking at the file in her hands. The upcoming meeting with Grayson had just gotten more interesting.

*****************


	8. What’s Wrong with a Jag?

A sleek black Jaguar rolled to a stop, conspicuous among the old-model Chevs and Fords lining Schiff Street. The cold winter sun was a psychopath’s smile: brilliant without warmth. It was November, and the city yards had been prepping their snow removal crews for nearly a week. Still the traditional East coast flurries and sudden snowstorms did not arrive in Gotham.

Bruce Wayne, tall and elegantly handsome, was wearing his best vapid playboy expression. Clad in a charcoal-gray suit and black greatcoat, Bruce smiled indulgently at passersby who blatantly stared at him or whispered to each other. He leaned casually against the driver’s side door of the Jag, Batman’s finely-tuned senses scanning for danger beneath the dull, vacant eyes of an aristocrat. The illusion was important in this neighborhood.

It was noon in the East End and Bruce waited patiently on the street for Selina, studying the old row houses with the keen eyes of an urban planner, an architect, a social scientist and a psychologist. After the ‘quake, Wayne Enterprises had spent billions on Gotham’s reconstruction. Most of that money had gone to the financial sector and downtown core. Little had gone to the East End or Crime Alley, which had largely escaped the devastation of the 7.6 earthquake. Selina had told him, jokingly, that nothing short of a nuclear holocaust could level Gotham’s oldest and darkest corner.

Bruce couldn’t remember the last time he had been in this part of the city before nightfall. Crime Alley and the surrounding blocks were Batman’s domain, if the stares and whispers were any indication. Bruce Wayne clearly didn’t belong here. It had felt as though he did last night, however, with Selina.

Bruce Wayne had a photographic memory and he knew it was, perhaps, the greatest reason for Batman’s war on crime. He could remember in precise detail every instant of the night his parents were murdered. The scene had been etched indelibly on his eight-year-old memory and he knew that, for the rest of his life, he would still be able to smell his mother’s perfume and hear the sound of bullets rending the flesh of the only two people he had ever loved.

He also knew that, whatever the future held, the previous night with Selina would be a part of him forever. The pleasure of the long night, the extraordinary comfort and release of making love to her, was something he would be able to recall instantly fifty years from now. And the sharp pain of the morning, the way he’d left her warm embrace, would always be there too. He wondered if she could forgive him for it.

The door to the seemingly-abandoned apartment building opened and Selina tripped down the steps, clad in a calf-length red wool coat and a short, warm skirt. Conscious of the attention Gotham’s First Son was generating, Selina rose to the occasion, smiling broadly and throwing her arms around his neck. Bruce obliged, not allowing his surprise to show, and he lifted her up to join her in what looked like a passionate, breathless kiss. The display quickly became less artificial then he’d intended and after a long moment he reluctantly set her down. Selina, a coy expression in her dark eyes, slid down his body slowly, patting him on the shoulder and waiting serenely for him to open the passenger door for her.

She folded herself into the car’s luxurious interior, smoothing her skirt, half-heartedly evaluating the reactions of her neighbors.

His door slammed shut and the engine roared to life, settling down into a dull background purr as Bruce waited for the busy street to clear. Selina found herself fidgeting and occupied herself by opening the glove box. “This thing isn’t going to set off a missile or anything if I touch it, is it?”

Bruce shook his head, checking her expression with his periphery vision. “That’s the other car.”

“Right,” she said, opening the box and checking for a CD, trying not to look at him. “I was…surprised when you called. You disappeared so quickly this morning-”

“I had to see Leslie,” he told her quietly.

Selina tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “How did it go with the good doctor?”

“There was a fifty-percent loss of hearing in my left ear, but Leslie thinks it won’t be permanent. The ringing should last a few days, but my condition should improve after that,” he told her, his voice flat, mechanical. She didn’t doubt he was repeating the diagnosis verbatim. Silence hung between them for a moment.

“I should have said goodbye, at least,” he admitted quietly.

Selina shrugged. “I’ll get over it. You always seemed like the love ’em and leave ’em type anyway. No harm done,” she told him, not mentioning the encounter with Slam right after he’d executed the ‘leave ’em’ part.

He wanted to ask her what last night had meant, how things were supposed to continue. She seemed to think it had been a lapse in judgment which had led him to her bed, and he needed to explain it had been just the opposite. However, as Alfred was fond of pointing out, his ability to conduct a simple conversation with an equal was severely limited. Bruce Wayne was always better with action than words.

“I…I’m sorry,” he tried, wincing at the inadequacy of his apology. “As it turns out, I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”

Selina smiled impishly. “I wouldn’t say that,” she told him. “You did pretty well, I thought, despite the near-death experience.”

Bruce looked at her a moment and fought the urge to smile. “I didn’t mean that,” he frowned. “You’re a difficult woman to apologize to,” he finished, again checking her expression. Selina laughed softly, shaking her head.

“Maybe we should try again,” she suggested. At the almost comical flare of interest in his eyes, she smiled. “I didn’t mean that,” she told him, using the same tone and inflection he had. “I’m perfectly willing to do that again. But I think we’re total failures at this ‘morning after’ business. Can’t we just say, ‘thanks for the fantastic sex, let’s do it again sometime’ and then get on with whatever we’re supposed to be doing today?”

“Good idea,” he told her, relieved. He was forgiven for whatever cowardly instinct had driven him from her bed last night. He'd always suspected he was the "love ‘em and leave ‘em" sort, too. Bruce was disappointed to discover he was right.

“I think my mother would have liked you,” Selina said cheerfully as Bruce shifted into first and pulled out.

“Why?” he asked respectfully. Selina had never spoken of her parents before.

“I think her approval would have to do with the $80,000 Jag,” she replied. “I’d forgotten about all of this,” she said, sweeping her hand to indicate the car’s interior. Leather seats, state-of-the-art sound system, detailed finishing: it all added up to a life spent in wasteful splendor. “You do love to play the part, don’t you?” she asked. “Bruce Wayne, carefree playboy. The irony must kill you.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, bringing the car to a stop at an intersection. The few pedestrians braving the November wind watched and sighed with envy.

“Don’t play dumb, Bruce. It doesn’t suit you.” She considered his face, the suit, the expensive car, the throbbing club music which comprised the majority of the CDs in the glove compartment. “Not the real you, anyway. I don’t know why more people haven’t figured out that you’re Batman.”

Selina’s bold statement startled them both. It felt like a violation, something that should be talked about in hushed whispers miles underground, not sitting in East End traffic under the bright winter sun. She opened her mouth to apologize, then shrugged mentally and carried on. She rarely said the right thing at the right time, anyway.

“When you went to prison, there was an opinion poll on the news nearly every day. The first ones to say you were guilty were the people we used to see at fundraisers and cocktail parties. Reporters had to come down here, into the Bowery or Crime Alley, to find people willing to believe Bruce Wayne was innocent.”

She checked his reaction and typically his face betrayed nothing. Selina finally found the disc she wanted and inserted it into the CD player, noting with professional interest the value of the car’s sound system. The dreamy music of an Ella Fitzgerald jazz ballad filled the car’s interior.

“They believed I killed Vesper,” he said quietly, surprising her. “The entire country did. But most of the lower-income families in the state rely on my factories and social programs for survival. The majority of the free clinics and work opportunities in this city are maintained by the Wayne Foundation. The social elite in Gotham and the rest of the country have no such allegiance to me.”

Selina tapped her finger on the window ledge. “That’s cynical, even for you. I thought you believed that justice couldn’t be bought.”

“It can be loaned,” he replied. “But try convincing Superman of that.”

Selina smiled, watching the city fly past in browns and grays. She wanted to ask him about prison, about the fundamental changes she sensed within him. He was not the hard, unyielding man he’d been a year ago, and Selina knew that Vesper Fairchild's murder and the resulting media crisis had something to do with it. What was happening between them now was possible only because of that change.

She studied his profile, admiring the strong lines of his handsome, masculine face and that familiar square-jawed chin. “It’s a little strange,” she told him, “seeing you in daylight. I don’t think I’ve seen you without the tights since…”

“Since the Community Center opening,” Bruce finished.

Selina nodded, watching the skyline, the heavy Gothic architecture and stone gargoyles still dominant despite the city’s recent facelift. “I think we both have a talent for discussing the most painful subject possible at the most inopportune time. We should take the act on the road.”

“I…I’m not much of a conversationalist,” Bruce, master of understatement, admitted. “Pick something to talk about. Anything, painful or not. Dick is always telling me I should nurture my social graces.”

“I think it’s a lost cause,” she smiled. “But I’m curious about the car. Mind if I drive?”

Bruce shot her a skeptical look and Selina pretended to pout. He slowed and pulled the Jaguar over. They would hit the bridge in a few blocks and the traffic was starting to bottleneck. Bruce got into the passenger seat and Selina slid over, firing up the car, making sure the gauges were working and the mirrors were properly adjusted. She pulled out carefully, piloting the small car as though she were taking the final in driver’s ed. As traffic thinned on the bridge and they hit open blacktop she relaxed. He began to see what a good driver she was. Selina coaxed power from the engine, accelerating carefully to navigate around bends in the road with tight control, covering her bets, keeping her eyes on the road no matter what. She drove like a man, one hand on the wheel, the other propped up on the window sill, and he watched her legs as she shifted, the skirt sliding further up her thigh.

“You’ll have to give me directions; I don’t know Bristol that well,” she lied. He knew she had cased the neighborhood countless times when preparing to rob one of the massive Bristol homes. She probably knew the geography and access roads better than he did.

“You’ve driven point man before, haven’t you?” he asked her rather than ponder the implications of her lie.

Selina nodded. “When I was…training. I’d been doing small stuff for years - petty crime, forgery. I met a man who convinced me the bigger game was in jewel heists and bank robberies.” Her eyes clouded over, and Bruce wondered what she was reliving. “He taught me what I needed to know to become Catwoman. And then I betrayed him for a big score. He had to leave Gotham because of me.”

Bruce was silent. Selina continued after a moment in a brighter voice. “Anyway, for a year, any job we pulled, I drove. I knew the city better than he did. And I wasn’t afraid of anything.”

Bruce nodded, another piece of her life falling into place. He wondered if he would ever have all the parts.

“Turn here,” he said gruffly, and she made a smooth left-hand turn onto a gravel road. The road continued for about fifteen minutes, the Jaguar’s precisely pressurized tires sending up a spray of lose rocks. She turned again, following his direction, and soon they found themselves in front of the ruins of a house.

In its salad days, the mansion had been huge, a monument to affluence and mid-century architecture. Marble columns supported a two-story entrance archway and the three wings of the home converged on the center in a cascade design, each set a step back from the other. Selina guessed there had been at least a hundred rooms within that house, most of them filled with enough artwork and jewelry to keep her busy for a year. Those days, at least for this house, were over.

The mansion had been badly damaged by the ‘quake. A gaping chasm had opened between the east and west wing and the interior of the house stood open to the elements. The exterior paint and intricate detailing had chipped and faded. Inside the walls were covered in mold, the ceilings splattered with water stains. It was sad monument to a bygone era of wealth, privilege, and building codes that did not require earthquake proofing. Looking at the house, Bruce saw the Wayne Manor of three years ago, just after the quake hit. His family home, one of the first in Gotham County, had also been destroyed by the earthquake, most of it collapsing into the gaping caverns running beneath the house. The rebuilt Wayne Manor stood less than a mile away, a fortress with hidden security systems and concealed passageways which led to a new Batcave. This home, the former residence of the Bradshaw family, was gone forever. Only the shell remained.

Selina absorbed it all carefully, shielding her eyes against the glare of the sun. “Why did you want to show me this?” she asked him. Bruce picked his way through the rubble, advancing on the front door.

“I wanted you to meet the girl we’re looking for. I wanted to introduce you to Jessica Bradshaw.”

******************

They spent the afternoon exploring the old ruins, rummaging through desolate drawing rooms and deserted kitchens. Selina ignored the teeming vermin which had made the wine cellar their personal home. Cat-like, she was uninterested in mice unless they challenged her directly. Bruce delivered a contemporary history lesson as they moved through the mansion, scavenging for clues to Jessica’s disappearance.

“What happened after Jessica vanished?” Selina asked him, tipping an end table into an upright position and checking for a false drawer. Bruce was examining the wall for a concealed safe or a passageway.

“The family dissolved,” he said quietly. “Her parents divorced, and her father moved to Philadelphia. Her mother stayed in Gotham. She died in the ‘quake.”

“Does her father know about the dead girl on the train?” Selina asked. “Does he know that his daughter might still be alive?”

Bruce shook his head. “The Gotham PD couldn’t reach him. His secretary said he’s been out of the country for two months.”

Selina stood, stretching and arching her back. “I don’t think there’s anything useful here. You must have had one of your lackeys go over this place with a fine-toothed comb. What are we looking for?”

“Something they might have missed,” he replied.

She crossed the room, looking at the jagged remnants of a cracked fireplace. “Did you know the Bradshaws socially?”

“We traveled in the same circles,” he confirmed. “They attended the Wayne Enterprises Christmas Party annually.”

“And how were they together? Did he drink? Was she calculating and overbearing? Was Jessica bored to tears?”

“No,” Bruce said. “They were a family.”

Selina climbed on top of an overturned footstool. A large oil portrait hung over the fire place. She held up a tattered piece of the canvas, restoring the original image. It was a formal portrait of the Bradley family, and her suspicions proved to be well-founded. Jessica’s father’s image dominated the group, a darkly handsome man who towered over his wife and daughter, hands locked around his wife’s shoulders. Jessica’s mother, blandly pretty and dressed in expensive silks, smiled for the artist while Jessica sat awkwardly, even in oils. There was another picture Selina had seen like this, years ago, hanging over the fireplace in Bruce’s study in Wayne Manor. The poses were identical: Thomas Wayne, tall and handsome, Martha Wayne locked in youthful beauty, and Bruce, the child who would grow up all too quickly.

He had already seen it, Selina knew at once. And he’d wanted to show it to her. “I think I’m finally starting to understand why you’re so hot to find this girl,” Selina said in the echoing hollowness of the room. “Please tell me you aren’t that transparent. I’ve spent so many years trying to understand you, I’d hate to discover that you’re so easy to read.”

Bruce looked up, only his eyes betraying his reaction to her words. He seemed angry, but Selina knew this had all been calculated well in advance. “That picture looks more than a little familiar.”

He avoided her gaze, settling instead on the portrait. “Ron A. Cohen. He was highly in demand in those days. Nearly every family in Bristol had a sitting with him.”

Selina knew she had lost him. Bruce was thirty years in the past, posing for a young artist who flirted with his mother and talked in low, respectful tones with his father. They had all dressed up for the formal sitting, and his mother had worn pearls. Bruce had hated sitting still for so long and his father had quelled his squirming with a few well-chosen words. “This is for the future, Bruce,” Thomas Wayne had told him. “Years from now, you will show this picture to your own children. It will hang in Wayne Manor for decades. I hope you don’t want future generations to think you couldn’t keep still for an afternoon.”

The gentle rebuke echoed in Bruce’s mind. The original portrait of his parents had been destroyed in the ‘quake and he had had a reproduction finished before the manor was rebuilt. Generations would continue to view the last of the Waynes, frozen in oil, and might think little Bruce sat a bit stiffly. No one would ever see the Bradshaw portrait.

“Does it ever work?” Selina asked, interrupting softly. “Finding Jessica Bradshaw. Pounding the life out of the Joker. Taking down murders and drug dealers. Does it ever bring them back, even a little?”

“That doesn’t matter,” he told her, his voice lifeless. “The point is to try.”

Selina turned from him then, picking her way down through the levels of old rubble until she reached the grand entranceway. He hadn’t followed her. Bruce was still up in the library, staring at a portrait of ghosts. Selina sighed, heading out to the car.

He finally joined her, climbing into the driver’s seat. His jaw was set tightly, his posture severe. Selina tapped her fingers on the window, wondering what she could do to snap him out of it. She leaned over and brushed her lips against his cheek. Bruce turned to her coldly.

“We should head back to the city,” he told her. Selina placed her hand on his knee, slowly raking her fingers down the inside of his thigh.

“It’s early,” she whispered, shifting slightly so that her body was turned towards his. She kissed him then, her tongue flicking out to explore the inside of his mouth. His lips were rigid. Selina broke the kiss, smiling slightly and licking her lips. She liked a challenge.

He remained resolute, looking at her with detachment. Selina shook her head, undeterred, and slid one long leg over his, arranging herself until she straddled his lap. Men had a difficult time arguing with her in that position.

“It’s very early,” Selina amended, murmuring in his ear as she trailed her tongue across his earlobe. He didn’t pull away. She took that as a sign of encouragement and brought her mouth back to his. This time, his lips softened and he allowed her inside. A compromise, not a surrender.

She worked on loosening his tie, unbuttoning his shirt until his bare chest was exposed. Selina dipped her head, her tongue tracing fire down his body. She rediscovered the scars crisscrossing his chest, battle wounds from a decade spent locked in combat with the most perverse minds on the planet. Before she could examine the old wounds again, Bruce caught her chin and brought her mouth back to his. He finally emitted a low, animal sound of pleasure and Selina flashed a victory grin against his lips as she unbuckled his belt.

“Selina…” he mumbled against her warm, scented hair as she slid her skirt up, pushing the thin scrap of silk and lace that served as underwear aside and slid down onto him. Bruce arched his back, dragging in a ragged breath, his hands sliding to her hips. Selina kept her hands on his shoulders, brushing an errant lock of coal-black hair from his forehead. Bruce slipped a hand under her shirt and his rough, calloused hand massaged her nipple. Selina closed her eyes and bent her head slightly to kiss him, shifting her hips, feeling the heat and friction generated by his presence inside her.

It was over as quickly as it had begun. Bruce kept his hands on her spine as the last shudders of his orgasm faded, his fingers tracing the vertebrae in her back, blissfully relaxed. Selina sagged against him, her head resting on his shoulder. They were both breathing heavily and snow had begun to fall. Condensation misted the windows of the Jaguar, turning the outside world a soft, dim white. Selina shifted her weight, but Bruce stilled her movement, wanting to stay inside her.

“Comfortable?” she asked him, a small, contented smile playing at the corner of her mouth. He nodded, touching the side of her face, his thumb stroking her soft, smooth cheek.

“That was…”

“If you say ‘interesting’, I’ll kill you,” she promised, pushing his shirt open further to examine the scars on his body which had so fascinated her in the shower. Bruce closed his eyes and so missed the strange flare of emotion in her even green gaze. The scars seemed unfamiliar in the fading light of day, even to himself. He had only begun to notice the disfigurement of his upper body last night, with her.

Selina traced one particularly nasty gash along his ribcage with her forefinger, contrasting the texture of the ugly white mark against the smooth, firm muscles of his heavily-developed stomach. Without the protection of his cowl, it felt strange to bear the full scrutiny of her intelligent, concerned gaze. She touched his shoulder, brushing the soft pad of her thumb against his bare skin. “No one should have to live with so much pain.”

The hard, certain look in her eyes made him catch his breath. He recalled her fierce loyalty, that streak of protectiveness within her which resembled a wild animal’s ability to keep guard no matter what the cost. Selina’s voice, soft and strong, whispered a challenge to him. “I would ask why you do it, but somehow I don’t think you’re ready to tell me.”

He cupped her face tenderly, thinking of the portrait upstairs and its partner in Wayne Manor. She was right: that was why he’d started, not continued.

“Do they still hurt?” she asked, gesturing to his bare chest. He was about to shake his head, then changed his mind.

“Some of them always will,” he admitted quietly.

Her face grew sad, serious, and she bent her head, nodding in acknowledgement to him as one warrior would another.

He examined her body carefully now, taking his time as he failed to do the night before. There was an odd burn on the inside of her thigh - it looked as if someone had put out a cigar on her flesh. His eyes widened in surprise as he brushed tender fingers over the small, ugly burn.

“I’m sorry for reacting like that to a few old scars,” she said earnestly. “I shouldn’t be so surprised. I just…I’ve thought of you as invincible for so long now. It’s strange to remember that beneath that mask, you’re a man,” she grinned flirtatiously, “Which is a little funny, considering I was always attracted to the man.” She kissed him as she moved away, their bodies coming apart with a soft noise of suction. “I guess last night wasn’t a one-time thing after all.”

“I never thought it would be,” Bruce told her, cold now in the absence of her warmth. He fastened the fly on his pants and buttoned his shirt, assuming the costume of a wealthy playboy but leaving off the expression of one. He watched as she found her panties and smoothed the wrinkles in her skirt, helping her to close the buttons on her blouse. His hands did not shake.

“I think, on our next afternoon outing, you should leave the Jag at home, bring something with a back seat,” she suggested playfully. “Not that it isn’t fun to rough it, but I think the stick shift left a bruise on my…” she trailed off, wiggling an eyebrow. “Or we could try the other car. One of those Bat gadgets might prove useful.”

At the mention of his extracurricular activities, Bruce frowned, thinking that a night spent on the rooftops of Gotham with Catwoman would be qualitatively different from now on. He pointedly ignored her evocative suggestions, unsure as ever how to respond to her strange sense of humor. Bruce turned to watch the snow fall softly on the ruins of the Bradshaw house. “Why did you…why did you want to do that?” he asked her. Selina shrugged.

“Thought it might be fun.”

“No you didn’t,” he told her. “Increase in heart rate and breathing indicate fear, not sexual arousal.”

“Sometimes they can indicate both,” she responded, surprised. She had never been with a man who insisted on analyzing her behavior from such a scientific viewpoint. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said, her voice low and lovely. He nodded.

“Despite my best efforts,” he acknowledged. “But this was something else. What were you trying to prove?”

“Who’s in control,” she told him simply. “And don’t forget it. You want to disappear into some black hole of depression, fine. Just remember that now I know how to pull you out of it.”

He jerked his head to the side, looking at her in astonishment. That’s what this had been about? His reaction to the portrait of the Bradshaws? Not quite, he concluded, looking into Selina’s eyes. She was telling the truth and lying at the same time. One of her many talents.

Bruce started the engine and piloted down the long gravel drive, the car’s four-wheel drive and ABS braking system gliding over the fresh snow effortlessly. They made most of the trip in silence. A few miles from the Kane bridge, Selina asked “Want to hear a funny story?”

He looked at her quickly, then returned his eyes to the road. “It doesn’t look as though it will be overly amusing.”

“More funny-sad than funny-ha-ha. You know the type,” Selina muttered. She had never told anyone this part, not even Slam, who had probably guessed the truth anyway. “I lost my virginity in a car like this,” Selina told him. “A less expensive model, of course, one of those mass-produced reproductions that looked like the real thing but were made from cheaper plastics. I was thirteen, and I think they were a couple of those high-tech assholes who ate it when the market crashed in ‘87. They were celebrating one of the guys’ birthdays, and don’t ask me why, but when those stockbrokers party, they’re always after the youngest thing in a tube-top they can find. I made less than a yard, but they could have easily afforded a thousand.”

Her tone remained light, casual, offsetting the underlying horror of her story. Bruce downshifted, pulling the car out of the traffic flowing onto the bridge and into the parking lot of an abandoned service station. He shut off the engine. The Jag’s soft purring had barely been audible, but the gesture had its own quiet significance. They had important work to do later tonight; he was postponing for her. She wouldn’t have thought him capable of it a year ago.

“Selina, I…” He turned to her in his seat, those warm, skilled hands she so admired strange in their purposelessness. Slam would have taken her in his arms, tried to give her comfort with his strength and presence. Batman might have left. But Bruce Wayne, who knew better than nearly any man alive that you cannot comfort a memory, watched her in the dim light of the lot and waited for her to continue. “Why did you tell me that?”

Selina shrugged, facing him without fear or anger. “I just thought it was an interesting story. Now you know why I always used to boost Cadillacs or Porsches, not Jags.” His lips moved as though he wanted to say something but had changed his mind. She had never associated him with indecision, but Selina was beginning to suspect he was not as clear-thinking or resolute as he seemed when wearing the cape and cowl.

“Well,” she said, shifting her legs, “I’ve told you about my first time. Your turn.”

Bruce frowned, narrowing his eyes, understanding her hidden motive in this conversation. “You could have just asked,” he said gruffly, moving his hand now to rest behind her head, not touching her but making his presence known. “It isn’t much of a story.”

“You’re actually going to tell me?” she asked, incredulous.

He nodded. “You’ll be disappointed.”

“What, to hear about Batman’s deflowering? I’ll risk it.” Selina declared. He took a deep breath, thinking that not even Alfred was aware of the details of this particular story.

“It was…similar to yours, I suppose,” he said. Selina’s eyes widened.

“Someone paid you?”

“I paid,” he corrected, glaring at her. “I was living in Paris, training. Fighting techniques, escape artistry, criminology and forensics…I knew that any naïveté in one particular area could be disastrous to the mission, and so I included sexual experimentation in my education.”

Selina grinned. “Because certain unscrupulous women - and men - might use sex as a weapon. Remarkable foresight. How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Ah,” she murmured, trying to picture Bruce at that age. She couldn’t imagine he’d endured the horrors of adolescent anxiety or bad skin: something about him made the usual adolescent turmoil impossible. He might have been a little shorter, thinner, less muscular, but he was probably still Bruce. Very few people resemble what they become at fifteen. Selina guessed Bruce had looked like an adult for the majority of his life.

“So she was…”

“A prostitute. Of legal age,” he was careful to say, “and I was not eager to repeat the experience.”

“Why not?” Selina asked, curious.

“The look in her eye,” Bruce said immediately. “I couldn’t seem to forget it. She wasn’t in pain, or unwilling. She was just so…detached. I hadn’t expected that. I supposed I’d romanticized physical intimacy…I thought the act itself implied closeness.”

“You were fifteen,” Selina reminded him, close to understanding. During the Vesper Fairchild murder case, Channel Six had incessantly flashed a picture of Bruce as a boy, taken just after the slaughter of his parents in Crime Alley. The photo had been offered as evidence of Bruce’s unbalanced mental state. Selina had been shocked by the picture. When she and Bruce had dated years ago, she had never glimpsed a photo from his childhood. In the picture, the child he’d been had looked in every way like an orphaned waif muted by grief, except for his eyes. Those eyes had burned with emotions no child should ever be acquainted with, dark things that slithered and shuffled in the worst corners of the city. Whatever had happened to that boy, Selina knew he would never feel safe with another human being ever again, because he knew what people were capable of. He must have approached intercourse as the exception to the rule, evidence that it was possible to cherish another and be forgiven. Sex must have come as a disappointment to the wounded adolescent he’d been.

Selina took his hand, brushing his cheek. “I hope what happened between us was an improvement,” she said, and he dipped his head in acknowledgement. “And the others?” she asked, wondering about the endless parade of names attached to beautiful blondes in the Gotham tabloids.

Bruce shook his head. “It’s a short list.”

“How short?” she asked, unable to resist.

“Short,” he rumbled, waiting a beat before looking at her. She met his eyes evenly, wondering if he was joking to bring her back to the present. Finally she deciding it didn’t matter.

“We’re a bit of a mess, aren’t we? I mean, I knew we had issues, but…”

Bruce didn’t reply, watching her in the dim light. His eyes flicked to the side momentarily, narrowing, and then returned to her face. Selina’s lips parted, but before she could speak, he pulled the keys out of the ignition and got out of the car, making his way across the deserted lot. By the time he reached the far side of the gas pumps, the shoulders of his thick black overcoat were covered in soft flakes of snow. He halted before a dented old Camero, a monument to city rust and neglect. The car’s owner was struggling with the ignition, which had failed to fire. Bruce tapped on the window and the young man rolled it down.

“Look, man, I’m late for work…” the kid said until Bruce hunched over, letting him see his face. The youth’s eyes widened in surprise, taking in the expensive suit and chiseled features of the wealthiest man on the East Coast. “Mr. Wayne?” he stammered.

“What’s your name?” Bruce asked, friendly, smiling slightly.

“Dennis,” the kid replied, still awestruck.

“Something wrong with the engine, Dennis?” Bruce asked. The boy shook his head.

“It just won’t turn over sometimes. I think I flooded it. Takes a few minutes to kick in.”

“Mind if I take a look?” Bruce asked. Dennis popped the hood and jumped out of the car.

“I try to keep her clean, but…”

Bruce removed his soft driving gloves, bending over to examine the car’s engine. “It looks great in here. You take good care of her,” he complimented. Dennis blushed and twitched nervously.

“Well, Mr. Wayne,” he said politely as Bruce closed the hood, “I’m going to be late, so…”

“Here,” Bruce said, offering him the keys to the Jag. “Take mine.”

Dennis’ eyes widened, peeking over Bruce’s shoulder and catching sight of the Jaguar parked across the lot. “What?” he whispered, stunned. “Why?”

Bruce shrugged. “My friend back there doesn’t like the color. And she has a thing for Cameros,” he finished, shrugging with a ‘women: what can you do’ gesture. “You can sell it, if you like. Or keep it. Just don’t park it anywhere in the East End or Hunts Point unless you’ve brought a police escort with you to keep an eye on it.”

The kid was struck dumb and Bruce extracted the Camero’s keys from his nerveless fingers. Selina materialized beside Dennis, pushing him gently towards the Jaguar which waited patiently in the falling snow. Dennis climbed into the car, still dazed, and fired the engine. The roar of precision-molded pistons echoed in the barren emptiness of the lot. Dennis grinned happily, backing out carefully and signaling to them with a little wave as he drove off.

“I think Bruce Wayne just made another friend for life,” Selina smiled, slipping her arm into his. “Or maybe another witness for the prosecution. He must think you’re absolutely insane.”

“I suppose he does,” Bruce shrugged, opening the car door for her. “Want to drive?”

*****************  



	9. Racetrack Dining

The meeting wasn’t going well.

Dick knew Holly was nervous. She had a hard time making eye contact and her pulse increased noticeably, throbbing away in her neck as the small diner filled up with Bludhaven officers on their lunch breaks. Dick decided to take things outside, for both their sakes. He felt a little uncomfortable around other officers himself.

They moved through the small run-down core of the ‘Haven, empty office buildings gaping at them like broken teeth in a mouth that had once held gold fillings. Unlike Gotham, Bludhaven had never known a golden age of economic boom or cultural expansion. Since the death of the fishing industry along the polluted Avalon River, commerce in Dick’s adopted city was limited mainly to off-track betting and the drug trade. The brief period of development after the Gotham ’quake was dying out, the empty buildings and long unemployment lines souvenirs from that period.

“Nice city,” Holly said, shivering at the gray, overcast sky and dull buildings. “I think this place would have to improve to be condemned.”

“Oh, it’s not all bad,” Dick told her. “There are some really pretty places in the ’Haven. And the people are great.”

“What, the whores and the druggies?” Holly asked, watching him for a change in expression. Dick kept his features carefully neutral.

“They’re people too,” he said.

Holly shook her head, giving him the once-over. “Not to someone in that uniform.”

Dick didn’t try to argue. Instead, he decided to show her that not everything in Bludhaven was gray and ugly. They walked six blocks west and as the business core fell away the city blocks gave way to a stretch of urban bareness poised for development. The stench of the river was blowing in the opposite direction, and Dick’s favorite spot in the city waited just ahead.

The Hasnot Race Track had been built a quarter-century ago by one of the Gotham crime families in order to escape local restrictions on gambling. The grandstands and betting offices were architectural wonders, beautifully designed and lovingly crafted by a contractors who were, most likely, bribed or blackmailed into doing the work. Dick loved the track, a long stretch of warm brown sand encircled by a white fence and a shock of emerald-green grass. Even in early winter, the brown, barren landscape was almost magical, the pure beauty of the track and sculpted lawns adding grace to the cold, dead season.

Holly was quiet, introspective, and Dick kept up the small talk hoping to discover more about her presence in his city. They watched an early heat from the sidelines near the finishing post, leaning their forearms on the white barricades.

“You like horses?” Dick asked her.

Holly shrugged. “They’re okay, I guess. Never spent much time around them.”

“What about dogs?”

Holly wrinkled her pert, upturned nose. “Yech! I like cats much better. More personality.”

Dick smiled. “I like dogs myself. Cats are the lap-dancers of the animal kingdom: they’re only interested as long as the food or the money holds out.”

Holly continued to stare off into the distance, watching as the horses were paraded for the crowd. Their jockeys, flashes of color in their bright silks, were dwarfed by the quality thoroughbreds. Bludhaven was not a cultural beacon or a city with a great deal of financial influence, but only the best horseflesh in the country raced at the Hasnot.

“Do you have one?” Holly asked, her breath coming out in a puff of white.

“A dog?“

Holly nodded.

“Nope,” Dick replied. “I’m never around. Wouldn’t be fair to the pup.” He’d wanted a pet since he was a kid, but it hadn’t been practical. There’d been so many animals in Pop Haley’s Traveling Circus that getting a dog seemed redundant. Dick’s parents had promised that, when he was old enough and they’d made it to Florida for the off-season, he could get a puppy. But they’d died soon after, and Dick had never thought to ask Bruce about a pet.

“Want to watch the greyhounds?” Dick asked. “They run indoors. It’d be warmer there.”

Holly nodded, still eyeing him with naked suspicion. Dick wondered what she thought of him. They had exchanged names and a few pleasantries at the diner but no information, dancing around the purpose for the meeting as if neither of them had wanted to go first. Dick was accustomed to beating information out of suspects or paying for it, but actually working with someone from Gotham’s underworld was something new.

“Look,” Dick began, just to get them started, “I know you don’t trust me. No reason why you should. But I can help you find your friends and-”

“What did you find out?” Holly asked him, cutting him off sharply.

Dick blinked in surprise and handed her a CD in a blank case. Holly looked at him expectantly, eyes narrowed.

“It’s a list of names,” he explained. “Incomplete, lots of Jane Does,” he admitted, “But they are the girls you’re looking for. Twenty-three in all. Some might have disappeared for reasons not related to the case, but they all vanished from the East End or Desolation Row in the last six weeks.”

Holly looked at the disc, light bouncing off the case and reflected onto her face. “This must have taken serious computer work,” she pointed out, watching him. It took a lot for Holly to look a cop in the eyes. She still remembered her first trick, how much it hurt, how it felt like being torn up inside. She hadn’t made much that first time and later that night, two Gotham uniforms had rolled her for the money. She’d fought and one of them had broken her cheekbone with his nightstick, telling her she wasn’t worth the yard she’d gotten for the night’s work. She had been ten years old. She wouldn’t meet Selina Kyle for another year.

Richard Grayson was not, as Slam had said, “your typical cop”, and she found it easier than she’d thought possible to meet his intelligent, concerned gaze. He’d been patient, curious and hadn’t lied to her once. Until now. When Holly asked him about the disc, Grayson’s eyes wavered slightly. If she hadn’t been watching him so closely for some lapse into cop cruelty, she would have missed it. As it was, she filed it away, reminding herself to ask Slam what he thought of it.

“I’ve got a friend with links to the FBI,” Dick told her. Holly shook her head.

“My friend already checked that out. Those girls were ghosts: no one was looking for them, not even their pimps or dealers. I checked out a lot of leads on them and the ones from the FBI were the last to pay out.”

“There was still a record of them,” Dick explained carefully. She was smart. “Birth certificates, driver’s licenses, school records…everyone leaves a trace. And most of those girls left somebody or something behind. You just have to know where to look.”

Holly watched his reaction. “You and your ‘friend’ at the FBI must be close.”

Dick grinned. “Yah, you could say we are. Want to place a bet?”

Holly shook her head. “Not my thing.”

Dick nodded and excused himself, heading towards the betting office. Once out of sight, he made for the top of the grandstands, the thin crowd of early afternoon track junkies partying like the Red Sea before his Bludhaven uniform. Dick attracted a few hostile glares but, for the most part, his badge granted him unfettered passage. He arrived at higher ground and located Holly by herself at the far corner of the barren field. He waited, watching, knowing he wasn’t wrong. In a few minutes, he figured it out.

She wasn’t alone. A tall, thickish man with the face of an ex-boxer and a fighter’s stance had tailed them from the diner. He was good, able to shadow them for the six block walk almost unnoticed. Had Dick been anyone else, raised by anyone else, the man would have watched them unnoticed all day. Even now, he didn’t approach Holly, watching the next heat casually from a crowded vantage point near the winner’s circle as he waited for Dick to return.

Dick went to the concession and ordered two hot dogs, hoping Holly wasn’t a vegetarian. He was finishing up with the cashier when he heard the soft scrape of wheels on the pavement.

“Hello, son,” the Prophet greeted from the vicinity of Dick’s kneecaps. Dick stepped out of line and the little man reached up, neatly snatching one of the hot dogs. “Your offering is appreciated,” the Prophet thanked him, downing the dog in record time. Dick shook his head, moving to the condiment bar to slather mustard and ketchup on the remaining hotdog.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” Dick muttered. The Prophet wheeled himself closer and Dick realized that the Prophet probably had full use of his legs. The wheeled board was a prop, a weapon in grift, the illusion so practiced and perfect that even Dick’s trained eye had failed to see through the ruse. Bruce might have been able to, but Dick had never hoped to equal his adopted father’s skill.

The Prophet looked out through a sea of legs to the track below. “You have spoken with the child,” he intoned. “And it is a long, low road to the mountain, son.”

“Have another hotdog,” Dick suggested. “Maybe you’ll make more sense after you’ve eaten.” He handed the meat and bun to the Prophet, who accepted the food with a smile and a nod. His teeth flashed bright and perfect in the sun. Dick thought the only street-people who had teeth like that bought them in the store. The Prophet’s were real, and Dick wondered at the need for the lie. Why did the Prophet pretend to be a transient? Was he hiding from something? Or was he just as crazy as he looked?

“The dark man with the angel comes soon,” the Prophet announced with authority. Dick nodded, pretending to understand. “He brings with him the seed of mistrust, sown in fertile soil. The path ahead is dark.”

“You always talk like a fortune cookie?” Dick asked with a rookie cop’s cocky attitude, watchful and worried beneath it all. Barbara’s search on the Prophet yielded no information. Discovering the identities of the missing girls was easy in comparison. As it was, it took Barbara’s best processors and two days of work to find what little they had on the missing women in Gotham and Bludhaven. Bruce had trained them to always start with the victim of a crime and develop their profile of the killer afterwards. In this case (assuming it was a crime) their target was a complete blank. And Dick couldn’t shake the suspicion that the Prophet knew something about the disappearances that they had somehow missed.

“There is a dark place,” the Prophet was saying, his hushed delivery laced with fear. Dick wanted to compliment him on his acting ability, but the strange little man began to wheel himself away. “Trust the child!” he cautioned.

Dick watched him go, shaking his head. “I hate cryptic warnings from dubious sources,” he muttered, going back to get a few more hot dogs.

***************************

Dick collapsed in bed, his eyes falling shut almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. It had been busy at the station in the last week. The limited resources of the Bludhaven Police Department were overwhelmed by the slightest increase in criminal activity and the recent snowfall and cold spell in the city had forced many of the ’Haven’s homeless into petty crime in order to secure a warm place to sleep at night.

Dick mentally plotted out the schedule for the next few days. He and Holly had been patrolling together during the afternoon, doing research on the missing street girls. Dick made a mental note to go into work early in the morning and hit the Missing Person files for the fifth time that week. They’d spoken to a lot of transients in Desolation Row who remembered the missing girls, but no one had any theories as to what had happened to them.

And when homeless street people didn’t have a conspiracy theory or two, you know you’ve hit a dead end.

Dick sighed. His shift began at ten: he had at least four hours of uninterrupted sleep to look forward to before a new day dawned. Dick struggled to remember the last time he’d had more than three or four hours of sleep a night. Early childhood rung a bell, but Dick wouldn’t place money on it.

Tonight wasn’t his lucky night. Just as he was beginning to doze off, the phone rang. Not Dick Grayson’s phone, with the cheerful message recorded on the answering machine, but the hard line which Oracle, Robin or Batman used when making a secure call. It had to be Babs - Barbara. Tim would try to call later when he knew Dick would be up (Dick blessed the sympathy of his fellow sleep-deprived Robin) and Bruce usually didn’t call unless it was an absolute emergency.

“Hello,” Dick mumbled into the receiver. “Babs, I just hit the sack, and while it’s nice to know you’re thinking about me…”

“I’m afraid to disappoint you, Master Dick, but I am not Miss Barbara,” a cultured English voice informed him. Dick smiled, closing his eyes and lying back down.

“Hey, Alfred,” Dick mumbled, drifting inexorably towards sleep despite his best efforts. Something in the butler’s tone finally registered, and Dick’s eyes shot open. He sat up quickly. “Is something wrong? Is Bruce?…”

Sixty miles away, within the cavernous confines of Wayne Manor, Alfred Pennyworth smiled softly at the concern in Dick’s voice. He often thought it remarkable that young Mr. Grayson had retained such affection for Master Bruce, who was not an easy man to love.

“The Master is fine,” Alfred assured him, nervously twining the phone cord around his fingers before catching himself. He forced the errant digits to still. “That is,” Alfred corrected, “I assume he is fine.”

“Al, I’m running on next to no sleep. It’s been a crazy couple of days. Can the stuffy British stalling and tell me whatever it is you’re trying to tell me.”

In Bristol, Alfred’s mouth jumped again. “Master Bruce has not slept at home the last few nights. He rarely takes meals here, either. When I do see him, he is rather distracted.”

Dick closed his eyes and sank back into the soft bed. “Alfred, please tell me you didn’t wake me up because Bruce is acting…well, like Bruce. You know how he is when he’s working a big case. I remember back in high school-”

Alfred coughed, politely interrupting Dick’s recollections. “Master Dick, there is no ‘big case’. I have spoken to Miss Gordon, and Master Bruce’s schedule is clear of the usual serial murders and extortion schemes beyond the Bradshaw disappearance. By all rights, he should be spending this lull resting and preparing for the next intense period of after-dark shenanigans, not staying out past dawn and working himself to exhaustion.”

“What exactly are you worried about, Al?” Dick finally asked, deciding that there was no shame in surrender.

Alfred discovered he was playing with the phone cord again. “The last time Master Bruce seemed this withdrawn he was under the spell of that plant woman.”

“Poison Ivy? When was this?” Dick asked eagerly. Bruce and nearly every other man in a position of power in the Gotham City had been under Ivy’s control at one time or another. Usually the spell cast by pheromones didn’t last very long, thanks to an antidote Bruce had developed years ago. Despite constant pestering, Dick’s adopted father had never really explained precisely what circumstances had required the development of the antidote.

“It was before your time,” Alfred told him, offering absolutely no details with the discretion bred into men of his profession. “Suffice to say, I am concerned for Master Bruce’s well-being.”

Dick sighed, sitting up and planting his feet firmly on the floor, cursing Alfred’s skill at exploiting Dick’s weak spot for worried butlers. “I’ll be in Gotham in a half hour. Don’t tell Bruce I’m coming in.”

*******************

Barbara Gordon followed the tracking blip on her screen as it moved down green grids representing city blocks. Blackbird’s usual patrol route, she noted. And he was right on schedule. You could set your watch by his movements: she often did.

“So…what’s a nice girl like you doing in a tech-infested clock tower like this?” a warm, teasing voice asked and Barbara smiled, wondering how he’d managed to slip past her security protocols so easily.

“You need new material,” she grinned, turning in her chair to face a costumed and clearly exhausted Nightwing. “Alfred said you’d be stopping by. And I can’t tell you how reassuring it is to find out my significant other is coming into town from a guy Bruce pays to clean bat guano out of the Cave.”

Dick stuck his tongue out at Barbara and practiced a headstand. “Maybe I was trying to surprise you.”

“Oh, Dick,” Barbara rolled her eyes, unimpressed with Dick’s gymnastics. She turned back to the bank of monitors lining her command post. “I’m the Oracle. Nothing surprises me.”

Dick somersaulted out of the headstand and came to stand behind her, gloved hands rubbing her shoulders in a way that Barbara found most…distracting. “If nothing surprises you,” he suggested gently, bending down close to her ear, “why don’t you know what’s going on with Bruce?”

Barbara pursed her lips, shrugging off Dick’s warm touch and pushing her glasses firmly onto the bridge of her nose. Dick smiled as Barbara suddenly reminded him of the way she’d acted the first time he’d met her. She had been the mysterious older woman then, a freshman in college, the flame-haired daughter of the Commissioner and the face behind Batgirl’s mask. He’d just been entering junior high and had fallen hopelessly in love.

“Whatever’s going on,” Barbara said, “he’s intentionally keeping us out of it.”

“What do you mean?”

Barbara tapped a button, bringing the green tracking blip up onto a larger screen. “It’s three a.m. in about two seconds. Watch for it -” she said, just as the blip entered the East End and winked out. “He’s been turning off his transmitter and communicator every night. Alfred told you he hasn’t been coming home in the morning, right?”

Dick stepped back, frowning. “So? He might just want some privacy. I turn off my Oracom on patrol, too.”

“Not consistently. He always maintains radio contact, Dick, unless he’s in trouble. This is unusual.”

“Babs!” Dick exclaimed, surprised at her. “Don’t tell me you think Bruce has fallen victim to Poison Ivy! I thought you knew better than to give in to Alfred’s panic attacks.”

Barbara smiled at the mental image of the unflappable Alfred Pennyworth experiencing hysterics and hyperventilating into a paper bag. “I’m just worried, Dick,” she told him, her eyes dark hollows in the dim green light generated by the computer monitors. “He doesn’t exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to asking for help.”

Dick gave up. The only thing he was more vulnerable to than worried butlers were concerned Barbara Gordons. “I’ll track him in the East End, if it’ll make you feel better. Who knows?” Dick grinned. “Maybe he’s got a girlfriend he’s shy about.”

Barbara arched an eyebrow in disbelief.

“Well,” Dick told her, “you can be pretty nosy. So can Alfred.”

“I hope you’re right, Dick,” Barbara said. “He’s just not acting like himself.”

“I’ll stop by later,” Dick promised, already hanging halfway out the window which would lead to the roof of the clock tower. “I miss you, Babs.”

Barbara nodded absently, her mind already returning to the glowing computer screens. Dick slipped out the window, diving into the cold night air like the aerialist he was. He arched his back into a swan-dive, falling for five, then ten seconds before shooting a line and sailing half a city block. He landed perfectly on the roof of an office tower. A startled night janitor cleaning the office across the street jolted upright as Dick leapt off the roof at a run, waving casually as he sped by. The janitor returned the gesture dumbly.

Dick made record time, racing over the rooftops of Gotham to alight on an East End tenement five minutes later. He checked the GPS system with Barbara back at the clock tower, went a block south, and sat down to wait.

He watched as the streets below emptied and the moon set. Third shift workers returned home, exhausted, to the slums and broken-down housing projects of the East End. Junkies and hookers were usually local to Sprang Street two blocks west, but Dick wasn’t surprised to see a few loitering in this neighborhood. The night grew quiet, the human animals of Gotham returned to their hidden dwellings, and finally the East End slept. Dick felt his own eyes grow heavy, lulled into the warm embrace of sleep by the temporary urban calm and his own exhaustion. He worried that he, or Barbara, or both of them had made a mistake just as he caught sight of the shadow of the Bat.

The man who had raised him dropped onto a fire escape down the street, the threatening darkness of his costume merging into the shadows. Another figure dropped from the night to land at the vigilante’s side, and beneath Nightwing’s mask, Dick Grayson’s eyes widened. Catwoman.

They were too far away for Dick to catch the entire conversation, but one of the skills Dick had picked up during his formative years happened to be lip-reading. Best education a boy ever had.

“Are you sure that was necessary?” Selina asked, breathless after the mad race across the city’s rooftops Batman had led her on. Her eyes were warm and bright with exercise despite the bitter cold of the night. “I mean, he didn’t know anything about the missing girls. He was just a kid, trying to help feed his family…”

“He was selling drugs, Selina,” Bruce replied in what Dick imagined to be Batman’s low rumble of unquestioning authority. Dick recognized that voice and knew exactly when Bruce liked to employ it: it was a voice that meant the end of any argument. Bravely, or perhaps foolishly, Selina continued.

“Jesus, you self-righteous prick! Drug dealing is the economic foundation of the East End! You came down hard on that kid for doing something as normal in this neighborhood as breathing!”

Batman frowned, his posture stiff. “I made the consequences of the activity clear, Selina. If he tries it again, he’ll answer to me.”

Selina whirled, cracking her whip to emphasize her frustration and anger. The gunshot-like noise bounced off the artificial canyon of city buildings, the amplified retort lingering in Dick’s earpiece.

“What if he calls your bluff?” Selina asked. He didn’t seem to have an answer (she half-expected one of those ridiculous ‘So what? I’m Batman’ responses he’d been so fond of three or four years ago) and Selina, catlike, chose to try another tactic. “That technique of dissuasion never worked with me,” she reminded him, biting down on her visible anger, making her voice seductive, inviting.

“You always were a difficult woman,” he grumbled, anger draining out of his voice. Dick watched in amazement as Batman pulled her close, his arm fitting comfortably around her waist. “You aren’t really angry, are you?” he asked, already sure of the answer.

Selina arched her neck back to meet his eyes, not resisting his embrace but not encouraging it either. “I just can’t see it your way. To you, Ricky Marcos is drug-dealing scum. To me…well, he’s just an unlucky kid. I’ll help pull him out of the business because he’s too soft to hold his own against the more powerful dealers, but I won’t pass judgment on him like you do.”

Batman watched her for a long moment, face immobile. Dick thought he looked sad. Finally, Bruce bent to whisper something in Selina’s ear, the movements of his mouth blocked by the pointy ears on Selina’s mask.

“Doesn’t make you right.”

Dick picked out her response and the two masked figures stared at each other a while longer, a contest of wills. Selina won. Bruce turned and slipped inside the window of an apparently abandoned apartment complex. To his chagrin, Selina turned, looked directly at Dick’s concealed position and saluted him casually before following Bruce inside the apartment.

Dick returned her salute with a wave just as dumbfounded as the night janitor’s.

*****************  



	10. What Barbara Has To Say About All This

“Well?” Barbara asked, twisting in bed as Nightwing slipped in beside her, shedding his costume. “Was it Poison Ivy? Has our fearless leader been seduced by the Green Side?”

“Babs,” Dick sighed, kissing her neck. “I’m exhausted. He’s not in any real danger, so…I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

Barbara rolled herself over to drape one slim white arm across his chest. “Why was he turning off the comm signal, Dick?”

Dick tugged his arm free from where it had been trapped between their bodies and slipped his hand beneath her neck, noting with tired pleasure her warm nudity beneath the heavy blankets. “I…” he hesitated, still processing everything himself. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. You’ll overreact and start World War Three, Bruce’ll get all angry and quiet, and I’ll have to go back to Bludhaven tomorrow after exactly ten minutes of sleep.”

Barbara raised her head to meet his eyes. “Now you’ve definitely peaked my interest,” she said, trailing her fingers through the dusting of hair across Dick’s chest. “Tell me now.”

“Or what?” Dick asked playfully, hoping to distract her. He pushed himself up on one elbow, showering small kisses down the length of Barbara’s neck.

Barbara, with the single-mindedness of a Batgirl rather than the patience of a wise Oracle, pushed Dick away. “I’m serious. Tell me.”

Dick sighed, flopping over. “You won’t like it.”

“I rarely approve of anything he does.”

Dick didn’t smile at her comment. He knew it wasn’t meant to be ironic. Beneath the layers of respect and sympathy Barbara felt for Bruce, Dick knew she hated him a little. Barbara didn’t blame Batman for the Joker’s attack on her or the subsequent paralysis, but Dick knew she had never really forgiven him for laughing with the insane clown afterwards. Dick suspected his adopted father had made a choice between laughter and personal madness, but he’d never been able to convince Barbara of that. So maybe she hated Batman, and Dick knew she had no love for Selina Kyle. Telling her was going to difficult, to say the least.

“I saw him with Catwoman,” he blurted out. “They’re sleeping together, I think.”

Smooth, he thought, waiting in the darkness of Barbara’s bedroom for her response. She breathed in harshly and he almost flinched in anticipation of her inevitable reaction. He usually loved the rawness of her demonstrative responses. His childhood had been spent in an emotional wasteland, and so he prized Barbara’s ability to express what she was feeling without self-censure. Even when it forced him to dodge flying projectiles or expand his vocabulary to include swear words unfamiliar to even the most hardened Blackgate inmate.

“You’re sure?” Barbara asked softly, her voice laced with quiet anger.

“I take it you don’t approve?”

Barbara glared at him and reached over to switch on a bedside lamp. The small, comfortable bedroom was suddenly awash in harsh white light. “Of course not. Do you?” she asked, keen blue eyes fixed on his face. Dick sighed.

“He’s lonely, Babs. And whatever Selina Kyle makes him feel…well, lonely isn’t it. She’s always been a great distraction for him, and now that she’s one of the good guys…”

“Is she?” Barbara asked pointedly. “She seems to be the same old Catwoman to me: lying to the police, stealing, behaving as if her actions don’t have consequences. Dick, it wasn’t so long ago we thought she’d tried to kill my father,” she said, her eyes shadowed with the pain and uncertainty of those terrible days after Jim Gordon was shot. “And this is the woman you’re hoping Bruce will end up with? He’d be better off with Poison Ivy, because at least we understand her agenda.”

Dick sat up, resting his bare back against the cool wood grain of the headboard. “I don’t think they’ll end up together, but…”

“Jesus! I hope you’re not going to toss of one of those ‘guys have certain needs’ clichés and chalk this situation up to Bruce being horny,” Barbara warned.

Dick, who was very wise and experienced in the art of calming Barbara Jane Gordon, took her hand quietly and brushed his thumb over her knuckles. “When is the last time he even had a date, Barb? He’s had abysmal luck with woman and despite whatever vows of celibacy and isolation he thinks are necessary, I think, deep down, he wants what we all want.”

Barbara eyed him skeptically, guessing at what Dick was trying to say. “And what’s that, Boy Wonder?”

“Oh, y’know,” he grinned. “Love, liberty and justice for all. Hey, maybe she makes him happy. Happy as he can be, anyway.”

“Dick,” Barbara interrupted, “she’s a liar, a thief and maybe a murderer. I don’t trust her. I don’t see how you, let alone Bruce, can. I want to believe she’s capable of change,” Barbara paused, swallowing hard. “But Dick, this is Gotham. Nothing changes for the better in this city. Whatever traits we have inside, good or bad, are turned up to ‘eleven’ here. Selina Kyle chose her setting long ago.”

Dick dropped her hand and slid out of the bed, crossing Barbara’s small bedroom to stand before the window. Barbara struggled to sit up, fighting, as she had for the last six years, the dead weight of her lower body.

Dick was breathing heavily and he tried to compose himself. When he finally spoke, his voice was a dull, dead whisper, an echo of a tone Bruce had used in a hospital room years ago as Dick lay slowly recovering from a severe beating administered Two-Face.

“So what’s the point?” he asked, folding his arms defiantly. “Why do I have to watch the people I love suffer and struggle and die? Why do we all have to risk losing ourselves in this battle if the cause is already lost?”

Barbara couldn’t, wouldn’t, meet his eyes. She sighed deeply, raising her head. “I read something by C.S. Lewis years ago. He was talking about the effect of prayer and said he didn’t pray because it changes God, he prays because it changes him.”

“I thought you were a firm agnostic,” Dick put in, slightly mollified.

“The point is, we do what we do for us. It never really mattered to Tim or Cassie or you or I, or even…or even Jason, I suppose, what kind of an effect we have on the people we help or the people we fight against. What matters most is how we feel about ourselves.”

“That’s a pretty selfish way of looking at it,” Dick said quietly. Barbara shook her head.

“It’s pretty much our only concession to reality in this life, Dick. Lose that sense of obligation to yourself, and you become more like…”

“Like him.”

Barbara nodded slowly. “He doesn’t operate like the rest of us, which is why I find this thing with Catwoman so disturbing. Best-case scenario, he’s ‘acting like a guy’ and blowing off some not-so-metaphorical steam.”

“Worst-case scenario?”

“He’s using her,” Barbara said flatly. “Or she’s using him. They’re both masters of manipulation, and I wouldn’t put it past Bruce to use a physical relationship with her in order to get what he wants.”

“And if he’s the one being manipulated?”

Barbara swallowed. “Then it’s up to us to protect him.”

  
*****************  



End file.
